The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman that chronicles the struggles of a Hmong refugee family from Laos, the Lees, and their interactions with the health care system in Merced, California.
On the most basic level, the book tells the story of the family's second youngest and favored daughter, Lia Lee (Romanized Popular Alphabet: Liab Lis), who...
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman that chronicles the struggles of a Hmong refugee family from Laos, the Lees, and their interactions with the health care system in Merced, California.
On the most basic level, the book tells the story of the family's second youngest and favored daughter, Lia Lee (Romanized Popular Alphabet: Liab Lis), who is diagnosed with severe epilepsy, and the culture conflict that obstructs her treatment.
The Hmong religious belief in shamanistic animism asserts that malevolent spirits are constantly seeking human souls, especially those of vulnerable or unloved children. In Hmong culture, epilepsy is referred to as qaug dab peg (translated in English, "the spirit catches you and you fall down"), in which epileptic attacks are perceived as evidence of the epileptic's ability to enter and journey momentarily into the spirit realm. In Hmong society, this...
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