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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American
Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. By ANNE FADIMAN. New York,
NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. xi, 350 pp. $24.00.
Order/More information about "The Spirit Catches You and Your Fall Down" (Reduced price of $16.80, $7.20 off the cover price) |
Award-winning reporter Anne Fadiman presents a delectable "fish soup" of a book about the encounter between a Hmong family and the American medical community. This poignant study of the clash of cultural beliefs and practices touches some fundamental issues surrounding scientific progress and humanity. When Fadiman arrived in Foua and Nao Kao Lee's apartment in 1988, she found Lia, their seven-year-old daughter who was pronounced brain dead two years earlier by her American doctors, alive and lovingly cared for. Lia had her first epileptic seizure when she was just three months old. According to the Lees, recent immigrants from the Secret War of Laos who did not speak English and could not even communicate their infant daughter's sickness to the doctors, the seizure stemmed from spiritual causes. After several seizure episodes, and only when Lia was brought in still convulsing did the doctors properly diagnosed her as suffering from epilepsy. From the American doctors' perspective, Lia's condition was biological in origin and could be alleviated with drugs. Over the next four years Lia's anticonvulsant prescriptions changed 23 times. Gradually, the Lees doubted the effects of these complicated multiple prescriptions. When they refused to administer the drugs to Lia, the doctor had Lia placed in foster care. A few months after returning home to her parents, Lia had a massive seizure which left her brain dead. With death imminent, the doctors allowed the parents to take Lia home. Two years later, when Fadiman arrived to investigate the story, the Lees still harbored hopes of reuniting Lia's soul with her body and arranged for an elaborate pig sacrifice.
Around the struggle of the Lees and the American doctors, Fadiman weaves in Hmong history, culture, spiritual beliefs, and moral ethics. The Lees experiences during the secret war in Laos, as refugees in Thailand, and as immigrants in the United States become the focal point of the larger Hmong struggle to understand, and to be understood in the context of world history. Fadiman's richly charismatic and eloquent style brings out the smallest details. She uses personal recollections, folk stories, beliefs, and religious and medicinal practices to intimately reveal the Hmong to the reader. Those who are Hmong will find themselves laughing as their own eccentricities are revealed, and crying when they realize how these seemingly endearing qualities conceal their very humanity from outsiders. Often portrayed as primitive and oddly out of place in this highly technological nation, the Hmong present an ironic challenge to modern American society, and force us to re-evaluate our concept of progress.
Overall, the ingredients of the delicious "fish soup" are presented well. At times, however, Fadiman idealizes the bigger issues. Surrounding the Lee family and the Hmong are vague statements which portray the Hmong in romantic fashions. She writes:
The history of the Hmong yields several lessons that anyone who deals with them might do well to remember. Among the most obvious of these are that the Hmong do no like to take orders; that they do not like to lose; that they would rather flee, fight, or die than surrender; that they are not intimidated by being outnumbered; that they are rarely persuaded that the customs of other culture, even those more powerful than their own, are superior, and that they are capable of getting very angry (p. 17).
Like her historical sources, Fadiman relishes this stereotype which comes to us from the dawn of Chinese history. At times she casts the Lee family in this general frame. The proud Lees refused to yield to the modern, scientifically sound knowledge of their American doctors. This abstinent trait is extended to the Hmong in present day America as Fadiman uncritically reiterate sources which proclaim the Hmong to be the most resistant to change. She writes, "European immigrants came to the United States because they hoped to assimilate into mainstream American Society. The Hmong came to the United States for the same reason they had left China in the nineteenth century: because they were trying to resist assimilation" (p. 183). Fadiman supports the assertion that the Hmong respond to American society by becoming more Hmong (p. 208). Of course, assimilation is a highly subjective concept and one wonders if there is any way to scientifically gage it. Also, in the present context, one is left to ponder what "becoming more Hmong" means. If the Hmong are as ideal as Fadiman claims above, why did they not retaliate against the numerous incidents of violence committed against them? Ignoring the possibility that the Hmong may not be as ferocious as outsiders portrayed them, Fadiman rationalizes the non-violence of the Hmong thus: "although on the battlefield the Hmong were known more for their fierceness than for their long liver, in the United States many were too proud to lower themselves to the level of the petty criminals they encountered" (p. 193).
Aside from the historical characterization of the Hmong, there are other questionable portrayals of Hmong. The opening scene of Foua, back in the mountains of Laos, squatting alone on the earthen floor in the bedroom and reaching between her legs to ease the heads of each of her twelve children out is highly improbable. Having lived within the vicinity of a village, elder women who were related through marriage or blood would have been summoned to help Foua. As told by Foua, the birthing story might have meant to metaphorically convey the general hardship of Hmong women and should not have been taken literally. That Foua gave birth to one child alone is admirable, but that she did it twelve times is unbelievable. Also, Fadiman's analysis of the Hmong view towards epilepsy is highly idealistic. She claims that the "Hmong consider qaug dab peg [epilepsy] to be an illness of some distinction," and that "Hmong epileptics often become shamans" (p. 21). Having been born and raised by Hmong and having had a Hmong classmate back in high school who was an epileptic, all I had ever observed was the stigma attached to the disease. Aside from leprosy, Hmong people fear epilepsy the most, and the fact that the Hmong attribute its causes to spirit possession makes it even more frightening to them. A family that has an epileptic child is often shunned. Only a shaman can declare whether a sickness results from the attacks of shaman spirits. Thus, just because a person has a certain sickness does not mean she or he is automatically viewed with distinction by the Hmong community as Fadiman claims. In fact, within the Animistic Hmong world view, the opposite is often more true.
Fadiman's analysis of Hmong cultural practices and ethics are also questionable. Regarding the controversial practice of capturing young women for brides, Fadiman briefly cites a case where a Hmong man captured an under-aged girl and was brought up on kidnapping charges in the American court system. Fadiman justifies the incident by saying that in Laos, protests on the part of Hmong women had been "pro forma." She, however, comes to the conclusion that here in the United States some women were "truly objecting" (p. 240-1n). Fadiman's generalization is highly argumentative. Even in Laos, it is not farfetched to assume that the majority of women who found themselves "captured" had not been consulted by the potential groom, and therefore, were seriously objecting. The preferred method of marriage, which brings the most honor to the woman and her family, is for the groom's family to engage the service of a marriage broker, or "mej koob," to go and formally negotiate for her hand (Vang, 42). This, however, is often an expensive task and the woman have the choice of rejecting the man. A less respectable way, but one in which we can be sure was based on mutual agreement, is elopement--the woman simply follows the man to his place of residence. Otherwise, to kidnap a woman "and firmly lead her into the bedroom and consummate the marriage" is a vicious practice of a patriarchal society where men hold power over women. Once "captured," unless a woman can put up with a tarred reputation, she has no choice but to marry that man. It is disturbing that Fadiman, in her meticulousness, fails to inquire Hmong women themselves before drawing her conclusion above. She presents a one-sided, and necessarily bias analysis by quoting a Hmong man who had kidnapped his own wife.
Finally, one is left to ponder Fadiman's conclusion that the Hmong are "differently ethical." Fadiman was astounded at the creative ways in which illiterate Hmong elders cheat on the written part of their driver's tests. Further, she observes that the Hmong also unashamedly lie about their ages, physical conditions, or marital status in order to access certain benefits. Finding this underhanded practice to be inconsistent with the hospitable and generally straight forward Hmong Fadiman has come to know, Fadiman wrecks her brain late into the night until she comes to the startling realization that the Hmong were "differently ethical" (p. 242). Hmong were oriented toward the group, not the nation. Despite Fadiman's sensitivity towards the concept of cultural relativity, it should be noted that aside from age, which matters little since most Hmong don't know their real birth dates, the Hmong have the same ethics as any human group. They lie and cheat because they are desperate. In the described context, dishonesty is a survival response, and is not condoned by the Hmong as a group.
Overall, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is a valuable study of cross cultural medicine. Anne Fadiman have answered the most frequently posed questions about the Hmong. Among the scholarly studies and personal stories recorded and published within the last two decades, this heart-wrenching account reaches most deeply into the hidden crevices of the still wandering Hmong soul. This book is a basic guide for those who are interested in, or work with the Hmong. For others, the book serves well in forcing one to reflect upon the things which are often taken for granted. The book will enhance anyone's personal library.
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Order/More information about "The Spirit Catches You and Your Fall Down (Reduced price of $16.80, $7.20 off the cover price)