The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down..?

Question

Here's the deal, I was supposed to read this by this coming Friday and I am only three chapters through. I know the general idea of what the book is about, but I need to know more so that I can critique it accurately. At this point, there is no way I can read this in 2 days, I've got an 11 page research paper due tomorrow, and two more tests this week, and well as an exegetical paper due Friday. This critique is worth a good percent of my grade for the class and I need to do well on it, but I just don't have the time to read it. If any of you have previously read it and have any thoughts or comments regarding some of the issues in the book, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm not one to ask for homework help or things like these, but let's face it- I am desperate..

Thank you in advance for all your input!

Answer 1

Well, I hope the links below help you - here's a sample from the first link"

"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."