Research Catalog

Title

The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures / Anne Fadiman.

Author

Fadiman, Anne, 1953-

Publication

New York : Noonday Press, 1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 341, [7] p.; 21 cm.

Summary

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 were part of a large Hmong community in Merced. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians 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.

Subject

• Transcultural medical care > California > Case studies
• Hmong American children > Medical care > California
• Hmong Americans > Medicine
• Intercultural communication
• Epilepsy in children

Note

• "Reader's Guide": p. [343]-[348].

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-326) and index.

Contents

Birth -- Fish soup -- The spirit catches you and you fall down -- Do doctors eat brains? -- Take as directed -- High-velocity transcortical lead therapy -- Government property -- Foua and Nao Kao -- A little medicine and a little Neeb -- War -- The big one -- Flight -- Code X -- The melting pot -- Gold and dross -- Why did they pick Merced? -- The eight questions -- The life or the soul -- The sacrifice.

Call Number

JFD 05-11696

ISBN

0374525641

OCLC

39956563

Author

Fadiman, Anne, 1953-

Title

The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures / Anne Fadiman.

Imprint

New York : Noonday Press, 1998.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-326) and index.

Research Call Number

JFD 05-11696