Hmong customs and culture

Ethnocentrism is the attitude of considering one’s own culture as superior and as the right one, and looking down on other cultures. Ethnocentrism leads to valuing certain beliefs and behaviors that people share in a community and ethnocentric people believe that their way of living and behavior is the natural and normal way. Hmong people migrated to the United States from Laos to escape the ongoing war, and their culture and beliefs collided with American cultural in several ways. Hmong’s and American’s beliefs differ about medicine, authority and raising children. The Hmong have struggled throughout history to preserve their unique culture fighting especially against Chinese dominance. And the primary reason for their migration to the United…

The Hmong people have endured the persecution and killing of their people. They have experienced the oppression and hardships involved in immigrating to a new country with new customs and new values. It is not a surprise that the Hmong culture is gradually decreasing as time goes by (Nursing 220, 2016). The younger generations growing up in America are not as inclined to learn about the old customs (The Split Horn, 2001). It the future, there will not be many people left to teach the young Hmong…

In the Hmong culture, this phrase literally translates to, quag, meaning to fall over with one’s roots still in ground, dab, which refers to a soul-stealing spirit, and peg, to catch or hit. Apparently, since Lia’s older sister Yer slammed the front door of their apartment shut, the noise of this incident frightened her soul much to the point that it had fled. Lia’s first seizure as the parents have interpreted it as quag dab peg, is not thought of as anything being potentially dangerous or life…

that exemplify the barriers and obstacles people from distinct cultures encounter due to their ethnocentrism and lack of cultural relativism. After escaping to the U.S., a place completely different from what they called home, the Lees had to adapt and place their trust on strangers (to save their daughter) who viewed a condition with spiritual origin to the Hmong as a neurological disorder that had to be stopped rather than controlled. As a result, treating Lia’s epilepsy caused contradictory…

RUNNING HEAD: COUNSELING CONSIDERATIONS Page 4 Social and Cultural Diversity ? Counseling Considerations Thomas J. McCarthy Grand Canyon University: PCN-509 September 7, 2016 Immigrant Culture (Rasmussen, 2011) Recent immigrants are subject to a number of stressors because of leaving some loved ones behind. Therefore, counseling is usually not the first choice for these people. It is family who become their most…

In the novel, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, cross cultural medical communications are addressed through the story of a young, Hmong girl, Lia. Through her medical journey with epilepsy, the book shows how traditional boundaries and medical beliefs can clash and at times, bringing some negative outcomes to patients and their families. The novel introduces us to the Hmong culture, stressing their dire need to hold on to their culture so much that even some older traditions can make the…

Western culture’s fascination with the thinking rationally stems back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectual movement: The Enlightenment. The term rational is defined as “based on or derived from reason or reasoning, esp. as opposed to emotion, intuition, instinct, etc” (Oxford). Rationality was heralded as the answer to all problems and the path to a perfect society; while these views are considered extreme in today’s culture, reason is still viewed as mostly infallible. In The…

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the tragic story of a young Hmong girl named Lia who suffers from epilepsy and who was the victim of a cultural collision and misunderstanding between her Hmong parents and her American doctors in Merced, California. The story follows Lia’s family, the Lees, as they navigate the American culture and system while maintaining strong ties with their traditions, practices, and rituals. The author, Anne Fadiman, uses the battle between the doctors of Merced and…

Catches You and You Fall Down explores the relationship between the Hmong culture and the American culture; in particular the differences in medicine. Medicine has been a difficult subject to understand and master; moreover it becomes almost impossible if the person was raised in an entirely different culture than that of western medicine. This book discusses what it was like from both sides; the Hmong and those of the western doctors what it is like to deal with each other when it involves a…

dependent, weak and passive. On the other hand, men perceived as independent, strong and dominant. These traits define the roles of gender, but it impacts one culture more than others. The majority of the Hmong populations are people who lived in the hills of Laos. Large groups of Hmong people lived in poverty, had no or little education, and survived on farming. They are independent people who cared most for the survival of their family, thus; they do anything to make ends meet. The Americans…