The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Discussion

This chapter describes the story a Vietnamese boy Lac Su. His father was a Chinese and now his family is settled in America. Lac Su from the chapter seems to be an extremely sensitive, timid and scared kid who is finding difficulty in settling in such a different culture. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first one describes a horrible situation for the kid when he has to stay alone in the house and take care of his sister as his mother has left the house without telling any reason. Next morning he receives a call from his mother when she informs him about the reason that his father is hospitalized as he was beaten up and robbed by some Mexican thugs.

2. Describe Kai-fong/Ken’s educational/social/familial trajectory in the Fillmore article. What does the author recommend teachers should do to combat some of the negative forces that affected Kai-fong/Ken?

1. Describe Samuel de Champlain’s attitude toward his Indian hosts as he traveled down the river of the Iroqouis. Do you think he respected their customs or was he repelled by them? Why?

Along with the stubbornness of the Hmong is my last point that the Hmong and Americans have cultural misunderstandings. Fadiman came “to believe that her [Lia’s] life was ruined not by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding” (Fadiman 1997:262). Hmong once believed some crazy things about Americans. “It was said that Hmong women were forced into slavery, forced to have sex with American men … and with animals; that dinosaurs lived in America, along with ghosts, ogres, and

Chang strategically divided the book into three parts to show the progression of race, land, nationhood, and politics. The author then further divided the book into chapters that contribute to providing an answer to his initial research question.

In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there are many different intercultural misunderstandings. A Hmong girl’s life was forever changed because of these misunderstandings and some things could have easily been avoided, had each side taken the time to better understand the other.

The Hmong were well known for being a self-sufficient people producing their own food, making their own weapons, hunting their own game including birds, monkeys, deer, wild pigs, tigers, and more. They fished, gathered fruit, wild vegetables, and honey. These individuals were farmers and have very intimate relationships with the natural world(pg 120). Foua Yang grew up in a mountainous clan such as this. She had revealed that everyone in her village performed the same tasks therefore causing no class system. “Since no one knew how to read no one felt deprived by the lack of literacy.” They believed that anything of importance that the children needed to know could be learned through spoken word or by example. The elders were essential for teaching the younger generation among many things how to hold sacred their ancestors, play the qeej, conduct a funeral, how to court a lover, how to track a deer, and how to build a

Throughout the novel he focuses on the notion of language and how being a native speaker provides evidence for one to claim or be seen as a native of America. Chang-Rae Lee

What do you think of traditional Hmong birth practices (pp. 3-5)? Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). How do Hmong and American birth practices differ?

At 7:09 p.m. Lia Lee was born on July 19, 1982, at Merced Community Medical Center in California. Her family was Hmong descendant, a refugee from Laos that relocate themselves in America, California. The family was culturally oriented, but language limited. They cannot express themselves in another language except their cultural dialect. After Lia birth, Dr. Thueson noted that she was a “healthy baby” with the weight of eight pounds and seven ounces. Besides her weight, Lia’s assessment of a newborn infant’s heart rate, muscle tone, color, respiration, and reflexes was right within

3. Over the centuries, the Hmong fought against many different peoples who claimed sovereignty over their lands. What role has this tumultuous history played in the formation of Hmong culture?

1. Harry Chin, interview by Sherri Gilbert Fuller, Minnesota Chinese Oral History Project, August 20, 2002, http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display.php?irn,

     The Hmong had trouble adapting to American life. With no driver’s license or bank account, they had to make a living doing whatever they could. Not knowing the language in a foreign land doesn’t help either. The Hmong women adapted much more quickly than the men did because of the fact that they interacted more with English-speaking people. While the men were at work, the women were spending time interacting. The Hmong men also refused to change more that the women did. This shift of power caused a lot of changes in Hmong households. What even caused more of a power shift was the fact that the Hmong children learned about the culture easier than the women did. Instead of the father having control over the family like it was back in Southeast Asia, the children now had the upper edge. The children could communicate, interact and even drive with Americans. You could see a 16-year-old Hmong

: This week went well for me as I got to interview Eila and that was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about the Indian culture. Enjoyed doing my question for Saturday and reading all the feedback from the discussion board. I learned from the textbook, that family life is the major force that shapes all immigrant’s groups’ experience in the United States (Schafer, 2015). For Chinese Americans, the latest immigration wave has helped preserve some of the old ways, but traditional cultural patterns have undergone change even in the People’s Republic of China, so the situation is very fluid (Schafer, 2015.) In chapter 14 of the textbook on page 304 I learned what is was like for the Jew to immigrate to the United States. I learned that every schoolchild

2. What could be done by the instructor using this book to more fully develop (and improve upon) the presentation of culture given in the book?