The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

I hope The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is settling into its proper place not as the book about the Hmong but as a book about communication and miscommunication across cultures.”

Now that young Hmong writers are starting to publish-including Mai Neng Moua, who edited a landmark literary anthology called Bamboo Among the Oaks, and Kao Kalia Yang, who wrote a fierce, sad memoir called The Latehomecomer-I am happy to shut up and listen. It was exactly how I felt thirty years ago, when women’s voices were harder to hear because men were drowning them out. Still, I would have harbored the same proprietary resentment had I been they. I am no lover of identity politics I believe that anyone should be allowed to write about anyone. “Also, although the great majority of the letters I’ve received from Hmong readers have been positive, most of the negative ones have criticized me for telling a story that was not mine to tell.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures The fourth betrayal came when Americans condemned them for what the Hmong call “eating welfare.” The fifth betrayal came when the Americans announced that the welfare would stop.” The third betrayal came when they arrived here and found they were ineligible for veterans’ benefits.

The second betrayal came in the Thai camps, when the Hmong who wanted to come to the United States were not all automatically admitted.

According to many of them, the first betrayal came when the American airlifts rescued only the officers from Long Tieng, leaving nearly everyone else behind. After risking their lives to rescue downed American pilots, seeing their villages flattened by incidental American bombs, and being forced to flee their country because they had supported the “American War,” the Hmong expected a hero’s welcome here. “Every Hmong has a different version of what is commonly called “The Promise”: a written or oral contract, made by CIA personnel in Laos, that if they fought for the Americans, the Americans would aid them if the Pathet Lao won the war.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman