“If you can’t see that your own culture has it’s own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else’s culture?” This question, put so eloquently by author Anne Fadiman in her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, was the centerpiece of the book. The clash of western medicine in the plains of California and the medical and religious practices of the refugee Hmong immigrants was doomed from the beginning. The Hmong who chose this Californian settlement to be closer together as a family and a clan had no idea what they were in for when one of their own started to have convulsions, or as the Hmong saw it, the spirit catches you, and you fall down.
Learning the ways of the Hmong culture, both in their natural environment in the highlands and mountains of Laos, as well as their culture transfer from Laos to the small county of Merced California was very eye opening. I learned about journeys such as theirs in class and from television and textbooks, however I had never felt so much a part of it as I did when I was reading The Spirit Catches You.
The journey to the US, to a land the Hmong people thought was “free,” ended up leaving most families unhappy and with little life satisfaction. The Hmong way of life was stripped from them, yet they still were Hmong and continued to practice what ceremonies and rituals they could, such as sacrifices and healings by a txiv neeb. The Hmong in many ways did what they could to resist the culture change, which I thought was very interesting and uncharacteristic for many immigrants that I have come into contact with over the years. Many of the Hmong did not learn English and depended on the younger and newer generations as well as hired interpreters to translate for them. Many of the Hmong also did not bother to learn to drive, and of those who did many would cheat on the written driving test by embroidering the answers on their clothing. The main reason I found the book to highlight for why a Hmong man or woman would even learn to drive would be in order to stay in close contact with their family and clan. Hmong people also learned to use the phone to solely communicate with other Hmong. The outside community had to conform to what the Hmong immigrants needed, such as interpreters, government aide, employment training, and free health care for all refugees. I have seen many international citizens, mainly from Mexico, who came to America to work. The Mexicans I have worked with on the other hand, compared to the Hmong, seem to put more effort into learning English and conforming to the role of a US citizen. The Hmong had a sense of resistance and group solidarity that could not be broken, even if someone was on the other side of the country.
While the Hmong did have a sense of still being Hmong, they were still depressed and unhappy. I thought much about this and I can see how they would be upset at the fact that in the US we make everything pre-packaged and easily accessed, but in the Hmong way of life each person in the clan and immediate family a role to be into to, and a duty to their people which gave them a purpose in life. As described by Anne Faidman a typical day as a Hmong farmer in the Laos mountains, each part of the day was devoted to a task, and everything the family consumed, wore and lived in was made and harvested by the family. A sense of peace and freedom must have come from that which very few could hope to experience.
With the Hmong lifestyle centered around taking care of family, by harvesting their own food and selling opium, not for money but for silver and other ceremony enriching goods to impress spirits and call back souls, it is no wonder the clash of cultures was so drastic. The Hmong in Merced California proved to be as ignorant as the doctors at MCMC when it came to understanding each other. Neither party seemed to grasp the concept that both parties viewed the other as the inferior of the pair, and inferior simply because they were different. Of the great tragedies the Hmong people went through to get to escape Laos and cross the border into refugee camps, and eventually resettlement in US and other countries around the world, it was mind boggling to me that the thing they most feared about the US was the doctors’. For Hmong medicine is their religion, and for them it is believed that illness can be blamed by soul loss or past transgressions of the parents, it is not seen as the patient’s fault. Western medicine has no cure for sole loss or any way to prevent dabs from harming people, well no cure that I have heard about. The cultural ignorance and lack of effort put forth both by some of the doctors at Merced and the Hmong community ultimately led to the harm of some patients. I felt guilty when reading this book for my ignorance of other cultures and I hope that if I am put in a cross- cultural misunderstanding I will do my best to incorporate their knowledge along with my own.
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