The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

A pediatrician friend who teaches first year medical students requires that they read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the true story of the clash between the Lees, a Hmong family from Laos, with seven children and medical staff in a small hospital in Merced, California. After reading the book it’s easy to see why. A few months after her birth the Lee’s infant daughter Lia began experiencing seizures from epilepsy (in Hmong, epilepsy translates to ‘the spirit catches you and you fall down’). Because the Lees spoke no English and were inherently mistrustful of both Americans and the medical profession, a series of misunderstandings and mistakes were set in motion that lead to the worsening of Mia’s condition. Author Anne Fadiman spent over ten years researching Lia’s case and getting to know the family as well as all of the medical personnel involved in the story. Beyond that she also tells the fascinating and heartbreaking history of the Hmong people, their hundreds of years of nomadic living as well as their belief in spirits, gods and shamans (in their culture those with epilepsy were actually seen as ‘fit for divine office, often becoming shamans. Their seizures were thought to be evidence that they have the power to perceive things that other people cannot see.”) The story of Lia and her family struggling to survive in America is interspersed with the history of the Hmong people who fought on our side in the Vietnam War but were treated as lower class citizens when they immigrated to the States a decade later.

There are no ‘bad guys’ in this book. When doctors prescribe medication to help ease Lia’s seizures and her parents refuse to give them to her, it isn’t surprising that authorities are called in to take Lia away and put her in foster care, if only to try to make her well. The Lees, however, strongly believed that through rituals (like animal sacrifices and shamans) and prayer they could make Lia better on their own. The language barrier issue is unquestionably the most puzzling piece of this puzzle. When doctors tried to talk to the Lees they used whatever Hmong translators they could find, whether it was a janitor who worked in the hospital or the Lees younger daughter, not realizing that communication was at the root of the problems they were experiencing. Each side questioned the others motive yet each passionately wanted to do what was best for Lia. The story of what eventually became of Lia and her family is both heartbreaking and enlightening.

Fadiman’s style of nonfiction writing in a storyteller’s voice makes this book captivating, absorbing and the story of the Hmong people stays with the reader long after the last page has been read.