Book Post

I chose to read ‘The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down’ for my non-fiction choice reading. I ended up choosing this book because it combines two subjects I love to learn about—different cultures, and medicine.

The book is about cultural miscommunications between western doctors, and an eastern patient’s family. The Lee family is a Hmong family that fled their native country of Laos due to the “quiet war”. The mother in the Lee family is named Foua, and the father’s name is Nao Kao. The book is centered on their medical journey with their 14^th child, a girl named Lia—A traditional Hmong name.

Foua and Nao Kao live in a rather large Hmong community in Merced, California. The couple welcomed their daughter Lia to the world at a local hospital there. Lia was the first child not to be born at home or in a refugee camp. Lia began to show symptoms of epilepsy at the age of three months, and the first time she visited the emergency room in Merced, California was when the battle between doctors and family began.

            Lia’s pediatricians were Neil Ernst and Peggy Philip. They stood firm in their beliefs in western medicine, where as Lia’s family stood by their Hmong belief about illness and healing being more about the soul rather than the body. The Hmong actually believe having epilepsy to be an asset to a person. They call the disease quag dab peg, or “the sprit catches you and you fall down”. Hmong believe that this disease indicates the wandering of your soul, and this is seen as a positive.

            At one point during Lia’s treatment, after her medicine had been changed 23 different times, her parents refused to administer the drugs any longer. Lia was then taken from her family and placed in foster care. This was very hard to read about, because you know that Lia’s parents only are doing what they know, and that the truly do want the best for their daughter.

            The whole story is a struggle of Lia’s parents to understand and to be understood through this clash of cultural beliefs. The author of this book does a really good job of teaching the reader bits and pieces about the Hmong and their culture so that they are able to understand why Lia’s parents are doing the things they are doing.

             I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in studying anything in the medical field. It really teaches one to think further into the decisions that people of different cultures may make in regards to their health care, and why they decide the things they do.