Review of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Author(s):
Simon, Justin
Format:
Book review
Citation:
American Journal Of Psychiatry, Volume 160, Issue 12 (2003-12). pp. 2253.
Language:
English
Abstract:
Intensely researched and eloquently written, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down weaves sociology, history, medicine, and psychology into a tapestry that permanently raises the bar in literary journalism. This book focuses on transcultural health care. In the early 1980s, large numbers of Hmong peasants fled war and oppression in Southeast Asia and came to the United States, setting off a flood of xenophobia matched in intensity only by the Hmong lack of interest in assimilating into American culture. In the larger community, the clash was about money and community services strangled by welfare costs. In the medical community, however, the clash was about opposing belief systems righteously dismissive of each other. Fadiman, in a single case study, traces how misunderstanding can degenerate into paranoia. The clash of cultures strange and hostile to one another is of concern to us all in this post-9/11 moment in history, when our known universe appears in grave danger of being torn asunder by ethnic tensions. In telling this story so well, Ms. Fadiman has brought forth a work as potentially useful as it is engaging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)