The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Analysis

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a narrative nonfiction that revolves around a family who struggles with keeping their culture identity in a place where it is not welcome. The Lee family Struggles with discrimination, cultural differences, spirituality, language barriers and immigrant assimilation when they move to California. These are some of the things that get in the way of having one of their 15 children, Lia get the best care she can when she gets diagnosed as epileptic. Throughout the story the reader gets to see the struggle immigrants have adapting to a western society and how there is a tension that gets created between theology and modern science. Summary The Lee family …show more content…
When people come from different places their way of living, thinking, and being is not the same to one another causing a disconnect between the two parties’ priorities. Culture assimilation is the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society, which is the case of the Lee family would be the western culture. Throughout the story the Hmong culture is spoken of whether it was by the clothes, food, traditions, language, or birthing rituals, the culture of the Hmong was present throughout. Certain beliefs about medical procedures and the origin of diseases that the Hmong have are what conflicts with the beliefs of the western culture and medicine, which is what causes the disagreements and tension between patients and doctors. Both the Lees and MCMC’s doctors found themselves unable to step outside their own deeply entrenched beliefs, which is why it became so difficult for them to work …show more content…
The Lees American neighbors believed that they would kidnap the neighbors dogs and kill them. They were treated and looked at differently because of the way they did things and their beliefs, which is also a reason the doctors did not bother to see what their say way in terms of what was happening to Lia and how they should try to incorporate that into part of the recovery plan. Even though the Hmong were treated unfairly because of their culture, the Lee family would never change who they were and the culture they brought with them to the western society. As said in the book “Seventeen years later, Foua and Nao Kao use American appliances, but they still speak only Hmong, celebrate only Hmong holidays, practice only the Hmong region, cook only Hmong dishes, sing only Hmong songs, play only Hmong musical instruments, tell only Hmong stories, and know far more about current political events in Laos and Thailand that about those in the Unites States.” (Fadamin, 1997,