The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Book Report

In the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down it goes over the beginning of the life of Lia Lee. She is a young Hmong child who has unfortunately been born with epilepsy. The family had come to America to escape the tyranny going on back home where they had been forced out of their homes. When arriving they already had kids and they kept having more and more. Lia was one of the last born, or at least for a while. Later they had a child. Even though according to the doctors that it was a horrible idea. Lia had begun symptoms of epilepsy at a very young age, stemming from her sibling slamming a door. Even though the symptoms were there her family, not being brought up on western views were confused when they saw them. Their religion plays …show more content…
Nao Kao was her Dad, although he wasn’t very smart he worked really hard. Because of their lack of education, they just simply neglected their child according to western views. Back home they weren’t really too poor. Everyone was around the same social class, but in America they seem illiterate. There were many doctors over Lia’s life. Some of the most important ones were named Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp. They were there while she had gone to the doctors for her seizures. Lia became close to being a regular to them. Which is bad. Cam you just imagine being in the hospital so much that you become a regular and they get to know your family and they basically roll their eyes when they see you come in? It sounds absolutely horrible, but that’s what they thought about when they went to the clinic. In all honesty the Lees seem to be most like me. Although they believed in Tvix Neebs and things like that and I don’t, it’s their appeal to religion is what really pulled me in. I definitely believe in the power of prayer, I don’t rely solely upon it, but its severely important. I love my God and I believe prayer can change things. So I feel their pain. If a doctor ever thought it would be okay to tell me not to pray and that it would do nothing for my body or family, I would be highly enraged at the medical system. Therefore, I relate to how they …show more content…
Little did I know that I was going to have to do my culture of choice on Asian Americans, so it all went together great. The way that they view life is so much the same, helped me when I read this book to compare it to the research I had done on Asian Americans. Some things that were carried throughout the story such as the deep miscommunications between the two cultures and the challenges of moving to the United States as a whole. Sometimes when we see someone come to the U.S. we think they did it for themselves. We tend to forget that they have families and friends back home and they will miss them and some of them can become