The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

I read this book after reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in which Ali says that we should not always blindly accept different cultures and we should do more to change them. Of course she was talking about an oppressive culture, but in The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman the opposite thought came to my mind. What makes our western ways the "right" way? This book specifically refers to western medicine. I had so much marked in this book (thank you again, Kindle) I have just written my thoughts here with only a few passages actually quoted.

There are so many things to consider when dealing with a person who has been picked up and set down in a completely different culture, often without any preparation: the way time is kept, the cultural practices of using a person's name, if the names can be pronounced easily,
being uprooted from their own culture, language, foods, and put into a place where nothing really belongs to them. 

Looks can be deceiving. Just because the people of a different culture may look like us, particularly if they have immigrated to our country and have started adopting our look, doesn't mean that they have the same practices. Sometimes we need to ask, before just resorting to our own ways. We should acknowledge all kinds of intelligence. Perhaps cultural intelligences are similar to the multiple intelligences that we recognize in education and these different cultural intelligences should be acknowledged and worked with.

Do we (Americans) coerce people of other cultures to do things our way, thinking it is the only way? (medicine) Do we in our western culture feel we should have control of everything or should we except that "things happen... not everything is in our control, and not everything is in your control." Or perhaps we do this out of our own ignorance, not realizing there are other ways and beliefs.

Fadiman's story illustrates that dealing with a culture so different from our own may put us in a dilemma in which all the choices are discriminatory. What if there is a treatment that can help a patient but the family is unable to comply, through lack of understanding or ability? Do you then tailor the treatment so the family can and will comply, knowing that it is not the optimal treatment?

We should not be afraid to ask questions in order to clarify a situation. We should ask for help in understanding another culture and learn as much as possible so prejudices don't get in the way of our treatment of another person.

"If you can't see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else's culture?"