Book Chat 26: Anne Fadiman/The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Evil Editor said...Hi Anne. Thanks for coming. So, am I ill-informed because I'd never heard of the Hmong?
Anne
Fadiman said...EE: Not at all. When I began this project, my knowledge
of the Hmong (a word I had no idea how to pronounce) was a mere wisp.
And that was one reason I was drawn to the subject. I like the
adrenaline of a steep learning curve.
sylvia said...My mother worked with the Hmong in the 80s so I had a lot of context for this book (which was great btw)
Evil Editor said...In what country did she work with them?
sylvia
said...In LongBeach, California - same issues as Anne describes:
massive immigration and low integration and trying to work out how to
deal with it. The Public Health Department hired my mother as a linguist
- working on training interpretors and looking at how to teach English /
get information across to people who couldn't read.
Anne Fadiman
said...Sylvia--I'm curious. When your mother was working with the Hmong
in Long Beach, did she find her work more frustrating or more exciting?
Did she like the Hmong?
sylvia said...Anne: I recognised my
mother in the "liberals from other cities" that you described. She loved
the challenge - she was knocking down assumptions about language
learning, especially for immigrants - so the Hmong gave her an excellent
platform for proving that ESL tactics didn't work. Some of the issues
you brought up were familiar - I remember there were issues with
suspected child abuse because of the marks left by coins and my mother
explaining that it wasn't abuse (and that it wasn't painful, so I
grinned at the "yes it was" comment in your book) There was this
horrifying miscommunication where someone at the Health Department was
trying to explain about blood banks and the Hmong were already upset
about having their life force stolen (that's how I remember it being
phrased) because the nurses kept taking blood. And then someone said
that you could donate blood to the blood bank and get paid. The Hmong
suddenly understood what was happening: the nurses drew all that blood
from patients so they could sell it to the blood bank and make money.
Evil Editor said...Those crazy Hmong!
AF
said...EE: Er, I hope you don't really mean "those crazy Hmong." Do
you? In the early days, American physicians seemed equally peculiar to
the Hmong, and made any number of misinterpretations--for instance,
assuming that Hmong parents wanted to take home their babies' placentas
in order to eat them, which was of course completely untrue. I don't
think the Hmong are the least bit crazy.
Evil Editor said...Just joking about the misunderstandings.
sylvia
said...As I was reading, I couldn't help but think that it must have
been a huge challenge just working out where to start.
Anne
Fadiman said..."Where to start": a good description. There was the
question of where to start in the interviewing; where to start in
deciding which case to follow; and, years later, when I was ready to
write, where to start on the first page.
sylvia said...Yes, it seems like it must have been really overwhelming in all of those senses.
Dave
F. said...The cultural aspects of the Hmong were fascinating but the
"insensitivity" (for lack of a better word) of the medical staff was
just phenomenal. I've seen arrogance in doctors but not to that extent.
Anne
Fadiman said...Insensitivity of doctors: Well, yes, but there was a
broad spectrum. Dr. Small was genuinely insensitive. Neil Ernst and
Peggy Philp were exceptionally altruistic and well-intentioned, but
hampered by the culture of medicine. Dan Murphy was comfortable and
multiculturally skilled.
Dave F. said...I liked the opening of the first and second chapters. Both work well for the stories.
Evil
Editor said...What came as a big surprise was that people so primitive
in some respects--such that after a few chapters I assumed they were all
illiterate farmers--were suddenly declared to have flown war planes.
How did the US manage to train the Hmong to be pilots?
Anne
Fadiman said...You don't have to read to fly a plane or drive a car. You
can learn by watching someone else do it, and many Hmong became
exceptionally good pilots.
Evil Editor said...Still, it's a bit disconcerting to realize when I board a plane that the pilot may not know how to read.
Dave
F. said...They weren't pilots on commercial airliners, they were pilots
on fighter jets and only had to know when to fire missiles and drop
bombs. Trained killers. They were like Roman soldiers or Spartans or
Pharonic Egyptians trained to kill.
Anne Fadiman said...I'm not
sure "trained killers" is exactly right. Many Hmong were very fine
pilots who, in addition to flying combat missions, also rescued downed
American flight crews, carried supplies, and ferried other soldiers by
air.
Dave F. said...I know a mom, very devoted to her children
who had three boys and the fourth was her much desired for daughter and
was born with a severe mental handicap. It was tragic to watch. I had
the same feelings when I read this.
Evil Editor said...Lia is still alive at the end of the book right? What's happened since then?
Anne
Fadiman said...Lia is still alive, still in a persistent vegetative
state, and still living at home, lovingly cared for by her mother and
sisters.
sylvia said...I had assumed that Lia had died after the
final epileptic fit. I was somewhere around page 200, thinking the rest
of the book was going to be focused on the general cultural issues and
then when we went back to the Lee family I almost dropped the book I was
so surprised. I definitely made the presumption that of course the
doctors were right.
Evil Editor said...I wondered why more of the
kids didn't act as translators, as they are excellent students. Is
Lia's family typical? Is communication easier with many Hmong families?
AF
said...First of all, the events in this book took place in the early
80s, and there have been huge changes in Hmong-American culture since
then. Less translation is needed, since in most families only the elders
are still monolingually Hmong. Second, although it's true that Hmong
students do well on average, it's important not to
stereotype--especially because they're so much more heterogeneous than
they were twenty-five years ago. There are some excellent students (and,
among slightly older Hmong, there are doctors, lawyers, professors . .
.). There are also Hmong gangs. In other words, a mix.
Dave F.
said...Foua had so many children. Not that the culture didn't honor and
love children but the sheer number who must have died at a young age is
just breathtaking.
It's heartbreaking in so many ways.
sylvia said...Are you still in touch with the families you met while doing the interviews?
A.F.
said...Yes, I'm in touch with the Lees, and also with most of their
doctors, and with my interpreter and cultural broker, May Ying Xiong Ly.
They're all very important to me.
Evil Editor said...Do all Hmong children learn the Hmong language, or do some just learn English now?
AF
said...EE: Most young Hmong today are bilingual and bi-cultural. Many
know English better than they know Hmong, but most can easily converse
in both.
Dave F. said...When I read of the "spirits" of the house
(even a mud floored house) and how they sanctified it, I thought about
them being a forest culture with no real organized religion (like
Christianity, Judaism or the polytheistic Greek and Rome pantheon) and
it made sense. There were spirits around doing good and evil and they
could be "talked" to and "bribed" ...
AF said...It's true that
the Hmong didn't have a conventional "organized" religion, but animism
is a pretty powerful cultural force. Spirituality played a far larger
role in traditional Hmong culture than any religion does in our own
culture.
sylvia said...I was very intrigued by the argument that
the doctors weren't treating the soul, that made a lot of sense once
phrased that way.
AF said..."Treating the soul": Yes, that was a
crucial issue. If you believe that an illness has been caused by soul
loss, then ignoring the soul means you're ignoring the most essential
aspect.
Evil Editor said...Sad as Lia's case is, the saddest part
for me was when the Hmong trekking to Thailand passed an abandoned baby
and left it there. That takes true desperation.
AF said...That
was emblematic of tragedies we can only begin to imagine. I remember
when Dang Moua told me about that baby. He'd never gotten over it.
However, he couldn't have taken it. He couldn't have fed or carried it.
sylvia
said...I emailed my mother who said to tell you that she loved your
book. I asked her for recollections, here is what she sent me:
We field tested a slide show on TB one time with different refugee
groups. The university who created the content had included info on
the history of TB (what?) and had several slides with explanations of
germs using clouds with faces to explain how germs travel. Refugee
clients who were part of the field test did worse on the post-test
than on the pre-test ... meaning they were much more confused after they
heard the information than before ( the information packet was
developed by doctors specifically for refugees).
I loved working with the families - they just soldiered on trying to
make sense of a totally new world
Do you remember the story of Moa one of my translators who was working
on a translation and asked if americnas really ate "flesh"? I thought
she meant meat but she said no she meant human flesh - I said
cannibalism? and explained what that meant and she said YES
I asked about the piece she was translating and it turned out that it was a
warning against eating mussels. She knew the word muscles from her
work in the health department which in Hmong was translated as flesh
and hence the confusion.
AF
said...Sylvia: Please thank your mother for those fascinating
recollections. The bottom line seems to be that the Hmong were actually
being quite reasonable (for instance, confusing the homonyms
muscles/mussels), and that their American "educators" hadn't yet figured
out how to communicate effectively with them (hence the greater
confusion after than before the TB slide show).
Dave F. said...I
helped a Chinese Scientist translate papers on gasification of coal into
English and there were all sorts of strange mistranslations. His
government gave him the 6 week quicky Berlitz course in English and WOW,
he did so much better than I would have done with Chinese.
Colloquialisms were everywhere and ragingly awful to translate. Am I
wrong in saying that the Hmong honor their children?
AF
said...Dave: The Hmong do indeed love their children very much. However,
on the whole it's riskier to make blanket statements today that begin
"The Hmong do X . . ." than it was when they first arrived from Thai
refugee camps in the late 70s and early 80s. As I mentioned earlier,
they were much more homogeneous. Some Hmong have expressed
understandable frustration that some Anglo readers assume nothing has
changed since the period this book describes, even though 25 years have
passed. The book isn't about the Hmong now.
Dave F. said...Yes, I
understand the point. It was 25 years ago and we all change (and
hopefully learn). One of the oddest things that I learned from the
Chinese scientist was that he never drove a car, didn't have the desire
to drive a car and didn't care -- mass transit, bikes and walking was
good enough. I think we vaccinate our male babies at birth in the love
of red, fast sporty convertibles with powerful engines.
Evil Editor said...Out of curiosity:
Do Hmong who've become doctors tend to work in Hmong communities?
Do
members of Hmong gangs still sacrifice animals etc. ? We don't think of
American gang members as religious/spiritual, but maybe Hmong are?
AF
said...EE: I would guess that some Hmong doctors work in Hmong
communities and some don't. (You see a pattern here: it's simply harder
to generalize today about anything in Hmong-American culture than it was
twenty or thirty years ago.) But I don't know, since my connection with
the Hmong community is purely amateur these days. I'm in contact with
my Hmong friends, but I'm not reporting on this topic any more.
Hmong
gangs: I have no idea. There's certainly some animal sacrifice still
going on among traditional Hmong animists, generally for healing
purposes or at important life milestones (naming ceremonies, weddings,
funerals). The animals all get eaten, so I'm not sure this should be
seen as vastly weirder than buying burger meat at the Safeway.
Dave
F. said...Round about 1995, I had the owner of a Chinese Restaurant
that I knew very well and ate at twenty times a month tell me that his
"old" clientele wanted the exotic foods -- that included dog and cat and
other things we never eat in this country. That's not too long ago. the
old are set in their ways.
Evil Editor said...They all taste like chicken drowned in soy sauce.
Dave F. said...HAHA - stuff like that does not pass my lips.
AF said...Just a reminder: The Hmong don't eat dogs.
sylvia
said...I thought you did a really good job dealing with the economic
issues in Merced, dealing with the issues from all different
perspectives. That seems like it must have been a bit of a tightrope act
to write.
AF said...Thanks. It didn't feel like a tightrope. I
just wanted to be as accurate as I could. My role wasn't to defend one
side or the other, just to enable the reader to understand both.
Evil Editor said...And a good job not making the doctors or the Hmong the good guys or the villains.
AF
said...I was fortunate that both Lia's parents and her doctors were
honorable, well-intentioned, and intelligent people. Believe me, if her
parents had been abusive or her doctors had been racist, I would have
put that in the book! But they weren't. In other words, reality rather
than any sort of skilled juggling act provided the balance.
sylvia said...I loved how they were cheating on the driving test using cross stitch :)
Re:
Doctors vs Hmong. Yes, that's another great example of balancing the
different perspectives. Even though it was horrible that they took Lia
away from her parents, I could understand the doctor's frustration that
they were refusing to give the child her medication, "knowing" that they
were risking brain damage when he was trying like crazy to treat her.
AF
said...I have to say good-bye in five or ten minutes (which doesn't
mean this chat needs to stop). Just wanted to let you all know that in
case you're holding brilliant questions in reserve for the last moment!
Evil
Editor said...I see you have a book of essays available, Anne; are you
working on a book right now? Is book writing not your main thing?
AF
said...Well, let's see. I've written a couple of books of essays since
Spirit, and edited a couple of others. So essays have been my primary
genre in recent years. I'm not working on a book at the moment because
I'm teaching full-time at Yale while my writer husband works on a book.
(We alternate.) I love the teaching, so this is anything but a hardship.
Evil
Editor said...Yale. That was Evil Jr.'s safety school. Have you
considered a book delving this deeply into some other culture?
AF
said...I doubt I'd ever write another crosscultural book. I like new
challenges, and I've already said pretty much everything I have to say
on the subject. But I may do more writing on medical subjects. I've been
brewing a couple of ideas in that realm.
Dave F. said...Like I said, I enjoyed the book and I enjoyed reading your comments.
AF said...Thanks so much, Dave. I'll hang on for a few more minutes in case anyone has a last question.
sylvia
said...You may have mentioned this but what actually made you look into
this in the first place? That is, what started the ball rolling?
AF
said...An old college friend was the chief resident in family practice
at the county hospital in Merced, CA. Bill told me about some of the
conflicts between Hmong and their doctors once when we were catching up
on the phone, as we did every few months. He didn't mention Lia, just
the general idea of crosscultural communication problems. This was one
of several story ideas I proposed to The New Yorker--in fact, probably
the one about which I knew the least--and it was just a matter of chance
that the editor chose it rather than another. It's amazing how
completely one's life can be changed by such small, random events.
Evil Editor said...Thanks so much for coming. These chats are always more fun with the author.
sylvia
said...Yes, thank you! The book was fascinating and it was great to be
able to ask direct questions and hear more about your experiences.
AF
said...To all: This was such a pleasure! Thanks for your thoughtful
questions. When I was working on this book--an eight-year marathon--I
thought about 17 people would read it, and in a couple of years it would
be completely forgotten. So it's very cheering to converse with all of
you. You've obviously read it carefully, and that's what every author
dreams of.
