The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

This book is a brilliant ethnography and one of the first books I read as a young anthropology student, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.

It is about a Hmong family, living in California, that has an epileptic child and their interactions at a children’s hospital. The book came back into my life when my second daughter started having seizures and we were admitted into the same children’s hospital where the book was researched.

One of the doctors knew I was an anthropologist and reminded me of the book. Despite the cultural difference between myself… show more.

After a young girl from a Hmong refugee family is diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy, the resulting clash between Western medicine and Eastern spirituality ends in tragedy when she suffers a prolonged seizure that leaves her in a coma. The outcome might have been different if the well-meaning doctors who were desperate to help had approached the family with more understanding of and respect for the Hmong culture. But author Anne Fadiman leaves it to the reader to realize that there are no villains or easy answers in this thought-provoking exploration of the perils of cultural incompetence.

Perhaps the most important book ever written that compares what happens when parents come from one culture into another and have to deal with a different parenting belief system. In this case, it’s the story of immigrant Hmong parents into the US and a child with epilepsy. The parents seek help from pediatricians when their daughter is ill, but they are in conflict because they believe their child is a sacred and blessed being. Which advice do they follow? Medical or traditional spiritual?