Lindstrom 1 Nathan W.

Lindstrom Professor Brych English 1A 2012-02-24

Review of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

1997 saw Anne Fadimans book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down published and win the National Book Critics Circle Award. Over the course of some two-hundred odd pages, Fadiman tells the gripping story of a young Hmong girl with epilepsy who suffers a great deal of agony thanks to the insurmountable cultural gulf between the girls parents and what Fadiman calls western medicine. Unfortunately, what might otherwise have been a sterling tale is marred by the agony that Fadiman subjects the reader to by her insipid writing. Fadimans research appears thorough, and the story has great potential; but Fadimans writing goes completely off the rails toward the middle of the book, and becomes hopelessly mired in a myopic muddle of anecdote and rambling commentary. After briefly telling of the birth of Lia Lee, the unfortunate star of the tragedy, Fadiman describes the mysticism and fear-driven culture of the Hmong. The history of the Hmong is then briefly sketched, replete with an inane story of Hmong fish soup. Yer, Lias older sister, is blamed for Lias first epileptic fit, thanks to her slamming a door and supposedly scaring Lias

Lindstrom 2 spirit away. Lias parents then collide with modern medicine at the local

hospital when they bring in a seizing Lia. By way of explaining the parents trepidation about Lia being treated by western medicine, and their outright failure to give their daughter anti-convulsant medicine, Fadiman regales us with tales of Hmong in Thailand refugee camps who are afraid of many things in the United States, in particular, American doctors. As Lias

condition steadily worsens thanks to miscommunication and a lack of treatment, a point is finally reached where Lia is taken from her parents and placed in foster care. Fadiman breaks from the story to briefly play the

Hmong apologist before picking up the thread and telling of Lias problems in foster care. Lia is later returned to her parents. While glossing over their continued child abuse, Fadiman tries hard to paint them in the best possible light even as they engage in barbaric practices within their Merced, California apartment. An abrupt return to the history of the Hmong occurs next, with Fadiman relating the bleak story of Hmong use at the hands of the CIA during the latter half of the Indochina Wars in the 1950s. She also

relates the Hmong proclivity for the slash-and-burn farming of Opium, and how much of that Opium made its way into the veins of American soldiers in Vietnam. Fadiman then returns to Lia, and her final, cataclysmic seizure that combined with septic shock results in her brain death. Unfortunately, the book also undergoes brain death along with Lia at this point, and it rapidly becomes clear that Fadiman is quickly running out of steam, yet she bravely soldiers on, next telling us of the Lees escape from Laos and their coming to

Lindstrom 3 the United States by way of Thailand. Several apocryphal stories about the Hmong in Merced are related in an effort at further convincing the beleaguered reader of just how different the Hmong culture is from that of the United States. In a strangely lighthearted tone, Fadiman points out how many of the medical problems that beset the Lees early on in her book are now solved by Lias being brain dead; for example, Lia no longer suffers from seizures, as the mis-firing neurons are now dead from lack of oxygen. Fadiman attempts to relate exactly why Merced, California contains such a high percentage of American Hmong, followed by a single, careless paragraph explaining what became of Lias siblings, including her muchmaligned sister Yer. As the book slowly collapses to an end, Fadiman finds herself again beating the tired drums of multi-cultural apology, all the while demonstrating her marked lack of knowledge concerning western medicine and what she derisively refers to as Cartesian thought. In the final chapter of the book, Fadiman revels in the details of animal sacrifice and an insane shaman, writing with an almost sexual energy and closing with an eerie sense of nostalgia as the book comes to a seemingly abrupt, yet much pastdue ending. The story is tragic, the cultural collisions infuriating, the Hmong practices repulsive, and Fadimans book a dreary and confusing mess.

Lindstrom 4 Works Cited

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.