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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 7 page review of the book by Anne Fadiman. The tale of a young Hmong girl whose treatment for a severe form of epilepsy is impended by miscommunications and misunderstandings between the medical establishment and her traditional family. The author of this paper asserts that a little more effort to communication with the family could have proven miraculous in terms of the positive impacts to the patient. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: AM2_PPspirit.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" is an account of the conflict which erupts in response to what the Lee family perceive as an arrogant and uncaring medical
establishment. Although revealed in the pages of a novel, these conflicts closely parallel those that occur in many aspects of intercultural interaction (Spradley and McCurdy, 2002). The story
is an inside look at the differences which exist in cultural valuations in sickness and healing. It is also an expose on medical pluralism and the problems which can
result with competing medical knowledge. Finally, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" is an emphasis on the degree to which the both the power and organization of
medicine can shape illness and disease outcomes. In "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" the daughter has become the victim of
this establishment which through a series of errors she is converted from a life-loving young girl with a relatively simple medical problem to an invalid who is totally dependent on
her parents for her care. The tragedy here, as is true in many respects in the cross-cultural interrelationships of the immigrant experience, particularly that immigrant experience as it occurs
within the modern medical environment, revolves around cultural understanding. Lia Lees experience and that of her family shed light on the importance of the intersection between cultural understanding and
health and illness. This intersection can created situations of medical pluralism, situations in which different arenas of knowledge work counterproductive to one another in that they create tension and
other wise interfere with the healing objective. In "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" we find a medical environment which has
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