The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

By: Anne Fadiman

Narrated by: Pamela Xiong

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine.

When Lia Lee entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness and healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe while medical community marks a division between body and soul and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former.

Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.

©1997 Anne Fadiman, Afterword copyright 2012 by Anne Fadiman (P)2015 Audible Inc.

cultural understandment

Narrator was excellent, loved the book even though it made me sad. This book opens your eyes with cultural differences with western medicine. I recommend this book to all and especially those in the medical field.

Read this!

This book is beautifully written and opens your eyes to how important communication is between cultures. I loved it.

Updated Edition

If you read and enjoyed this book, originally published in 1997, you will be pleased that this 15th anniversary edition contains an epilogue so you can find out what happened in later years. The book remains compelling and relevant.

Amazing

This book is awesome!! It really shows the cross cultural defecits that have existed in our western medical facilities and the importance of a patient centered medical home that has providers that are respectful and aware of other cultures like the Hmong and are not so quick to judge. This book really pulls at the heart strings! Loved it! The narrator was great too! Really kept me interested and listening with her tone of voice and enthusiasm.

Absolutely Impressive

Really love this work of art, and the narrators hints of Hmong alliteration. This work was a book club reading at the medical institution in which I work, and it is very enlightening. Definitely a must read.