spiritual and physical ailment. According to Fadiman (1997)‚ “…the noise of the door had been so profoundly frightening that her soul had fled her body and become lost. They recognized the resulting symptoms as qaug dab peg‚ which means ‘the spirit catches you and you fall down’”(p.20). To the Lee family‚ Lia’s condition was as revered as it was frightening. While a person with qaug dab peg was traditionally held in high esteem in the Hmong culture‚ it was also terrifying enough that the Lee’s rushed
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They believed it translated into Qaug dab peg. What was misunderstood is that quag dab peg were not really perceived as the same thing in Hmong culture as Epilepsy is in western medicine. In the Hmong culture‚ QDP is believed to be caused by a bad spirit called a dab. It is believed that dabs are responsible for stealing souls and making its victims sick. Epilepsy is recognized by western medicine as a serious neurological condition. Although Epilepsy and Quag dab peg may have the same physical symptoms
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Praise for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down “Fadiman describes with extraordinary skill the colliding worlds of Western medicine and Hmong culture.” —The New Yorker “This fine book recounts a poignant tragedy…It has no heroes or villains‚ but it has an abundance of innocent suffering‚ and it most certainly does have a moral…[A] sad‚ excellent book.” —Melvin Konner‚ The New York Times Book Review “An intriguing‚ spirit-lifting‚ extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy
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1. The traditional Hmong birth practices are so different from the birth practices we use here in the United States. Foua’s previous child births before Lia were very different. She gave birth inside her home‚ with completely no help. She also cut and tied the umbilical cord with a string. Afterwards they buried the placentas as a tradition to their beliefs. Now‚ with Lia’s birth she was in a public hospital where she was attended by doctors and given medicine. It was also sanitary there‚ unlike
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of Lia Lee‚ a Hmong child with epilepsy‚ whose tragic downfall reveals the dangers of a lack of cross-cultural communication in the medical profession. At the age of three months‚ Lia had her first seizure caused by the sound of a door being slammed shut‚ by her older sister Yer. Their parents‚ Foua and Nao Kao believed that the sound of the door had caused Lia’s soul to flee‚ they called her illness “qaug dab peg”‚ which means “the spirit catches
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an illness may be completely different than another. These different views and opinions can often cause cultures to collide when a doctor is summoned to treat an individual of a different culture than their own. Anne Fadiman’s book‚ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚ tells the story of an epileptic Hmong child and her collision of two cultures. Lia Lee began suffering seizures at a young age and was diagnosed with epilepsy by American doctors. Her family however believed her illness was caused
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down In the book‚ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚ Anne Fadiman tells us the story of a little girl named Lia Lee‚ caught between the differences of two cultures. The differences in Lia’s parents’ knowledge‚ abilities‚ and understanding of the culture they were surrounded by and the rationalized facts that Western medicine and its culture provide bring us to the borderland of the two. When these two cultures meet Lia’s life is put in danger‚ not
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In this essay I will review the question of how the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down exemplifies the techniques of ethnographic research that we have studied in class. Also I will consider the question if there are ways in which Fadiman could have improved her methods to be a better anthropologist. In the essay I will look at the specific methods and techniques that Fadiman utilized. I will discuss where she conducted her research and also cover how she conducted her fieldwork. I suggest Anthropological
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In Chapter 1 of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚ Fadiman demonstrates cultural relativism towards the Hmong culture by including very detailed history‚ facts and procedures found in Hmong culture. When explaining the long process of pregnancy and birth in Hmong culture‚ she does not make and claims for or against these rituals. She does not compare the cultures rituals to another culture. Fadiman simply states facts and explains the steps it takes for a woman to give birth to a child. She
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The Collision of Two Cultures - Implications of Cultural Values and Beliefs on Caring Concepts Abstract This paper is a personal response to Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The paper includes a summary of the book‚ an overall impression of the reader‚ a discussion of three major themes evident in the book‚ and a description of a situation from the book and how the situation could be handled differently using references and material learned in 3020 Transcultural
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