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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman’s 1997 book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures won her literary prizes, national attention, particularly from the medical and social work communities, and many similar accolades. I read that the the book is required reading for first year medical students in many American medical schools, and I am convinced after reading the book, that it should be required reading for all doctors and medical students. It should also be required for spiritual “doctors”, missionaries and pastors, especially those who relate to refugee populations or who attempt to minster cross-culturally.

The book tells the story of a Hmong family from Laos and their difficulties with the medical system in Merced County, California, as it related to their epileptic daughter, Lia Lee. However, the story is much more than just a history of tragic misunderstandings across cultures. Ms. Fadiman also intersperses a great deal of the history and folklore of the Hmong people, and she explains some of the deep cultural differences between the Hmong and the Americans who welcomed them into this country. The story of Lia Lee and her family shows how those differences became insurmountable walls that led to Lia’s eventual “living death” of entering into a persistent vegetative state for the final twenty-six years of her life.

Hmong spiritual practices such as shamanism and ritual sacrifice clashed with modern medical practice. Hmong beliefs in patriarchy and demons causing sickness conflicted with doctors who believed that their authority and medical education entitled them to prescribe what treatment Lia should get. The doctors expected Lia’s parents to trust them and follow their directions. Lia’s parents expected the doctors to “fix Lia” and then leave them alone to care for her as they saw fit. Neither the doctors nor the parents were listening to the other, partly because of the language barrier, but even more because of a cultural barrier that made them disrespect and distrust one another. As a result of miscommunication and stubbornness on both sides, Lia became “quadriplegic, spastic, incontinent, and incapable of purposeful movement. Her condition was termed a persistent vegetative state.’

My thoughts about this story tended toward the spiritual, even though the very few brief mentions of Christians or Christianity in the book are uniformly disparaging. How would I talk about Jesus or share His love with a Hmong neighbor? To begin to communicate the love of Christ to a person of a very different background and culture would take what Eugene Peterson called “long obedience in the same direction.” (The phrase actually comes from Nietzsche, of all people.) I would have to put myself and my own feelings aside and live my life before God as a loving and patient and understanding neighbor, always being ready to give a reason for the hope within me. In fact, that’s what we are going to have to do more and more as our culture moves away from a Christian consensus such that there’s a deep cultural chasm between Christians and almost anyone else that we try to love and evangelize. We have to be patient and kind and persistent and faithful.

And we have to be willing to fail, and leave the ending to God and His mercy.

Lia Lee 1982-2012
Lia Lee died on August 31, 2012. She was thirty years old and had been in a vegetative state since the age of four. Until the day of her death, her family cared for her lovingly at home.

Peach Heaven by Yangsook Choi

Picture Book Around the World: Reading Through Korea I’m working hard on my Picture Book Around the World sequel to Picture Book Preschool, my preschool read aloud curriculum for homeschooling your preschooler or kindergartner. This week at Semicolon, we’re going to be visiting Korea through the medium of a treasure trove of picture books featuring that country and its children.

The setting is Puchon, South Korea, 1976. Yangsook is day-dreaming about a peach garden in heaven–just like the calendar picture of children playing in a peach orchard that is posted above her desk. Puchon is famous for growing beautiful, juicy peaches that are sold all over Korea.

The voices of her grandma and her little brother come intruding into Yangsook’s daydream, telling her to come and look at the rain which has turned to hail. But it’s not hail—it’s raining peaches!

There were a couple of oddities in this story, which is actually based on a childhood memory of the author. First of all, I’ve never heard of peaches raining down from the sky, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief. But the other odd scene is when the the townsfolk bring the peaches back to the farmers’ orchards and tie them to the trees with yarn. Why? To console the farmers for the loss of most of their peach crop. I suppose it made a good visual image to tie the peaches to the trees, but it seems rather superfluous in practical terms.

Anyway, I doubt children will have the same questions that I did. Instead, they will most likely enjoy this quiet little story of a girl growing up in South Korea and an memorable episode in her childhood. The watercolor illustrations, which were done by the author, complement the story and its mood quite well.

1976: Events and Inventions

The Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975, continues to see fighting between Palestinians (Palestinian Liberation Organization), the Lebanese government, and Phalangists (supported by Maronite Christians). In June, Syria intervenes in the civil war, sending in troops to keep the peace, support the government and establish SYrian control over the northern half of Lebanon.

January 5, 1976. The Khmer Republic (Cambodia) is officially renamed Democratic Kampuchea as a new constitution is proclaimed by the Pol Pot regime.

'Concorde' photo (c) 2008, mroach - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/January 21, 1976. The Air France supersonic turbojet Concorde makes its first commercial flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. The new faster-than-the-speed-of-sound jet can cross the Atlantic in just three hours.

February 4, 1976. In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000 people.

April 1, 1976. Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Cupertino, California. The new company begins assembling its first personal computer kits for sale later in the year in the U.S.

June, 1976. Rioters and police clash in Soweto, a township just outside Johannesburg, South Africa where black students and adults are protesting the segregated and unjust educational system in the country. At least fifty people are killed, and hundreds more are wounded, when police open fire on a protest march by schoolchildren.

'Hector Pieterson' photo (c) 2007, Robert Cutts - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/July 4, 1976. Entebbe Raid: Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport; 1 Israeli soldier and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in the raid.

July 20, 1976. The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars and sends back to Earth the first close-up pictures of the planet’s surface.

August 14, 1976. Ten thousand Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland.

September 9, 1976. Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the People’s Republic of China since 1949, dies at the age of 82, after suffering a series of strokes. The Chinese Communist Party has already split into at least two groups, radical Maoists led by Mao’s widow Chiang Chin and the more moderate communists led by Deng Xiaoping. In October Chiang Chin is arrested for plotting to overthrow the government.