After finishing The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, I questioned what action I would have taken if I found out that my child would be in a permanent vegetative state. I feel that I would probably prefer that my child no longer have to suffer since to me the condition he or she is in would no longer give them a quality of life worth living for. I was somewhat expecting that the Lees would have the same opinion yet when they took Lia home, they did not wait for her to die as the doctors or I thought they would, but instead they cared for her so that she lived. The care that the Lees invest in Lia got the attention of several people in the hospital. Peggy even described how clean and well cared for Lia was because of her parents and family. She also comments that “[t]hey did a better job than most white families. Most white families would institutionalize her in a second” (214). I thought this comment was very interesting and created questions for me. Why did she compare between the care given by a white family and the Lees? Why would most white families choose to institutionalize their child if he or she suffered from a severely debilitating disease or condition? It seems that Peggy is complementing the Lees when she claims their care was better than how a typical white family’s care practices. I think she assumes that a white family is more likely to be in a better financial situation than most Hmong refugees, so the family would be more likely to have access to more things that would help in the care of the child as well as a better understanding of their child’s condition. The fact that Peggy made this comparison also suggests that the white family is typically viewed as the model care givers and care given by people of a different culture is sub par. Of course the statement is really ironic since at the beginning the doctors saw the Lees as unfit care givers and so had Lia moved to a foster home. For my second question, I agree as it was mentioned in class today that most people have to work and do not have the time that is necessary to give the ultimate amount of care for someone in Lia’s position, so sending that person to a place that can give them the care they need would be the best for both parties. However, I feel that Peggy’s comment also suggests that most white families would rather not be burdened with a child or person who is completely dependent on them to survive. So by institutionalizing them, the family is relieved of having to care for them

With this in mind I was reminded of Susan Wendall’s article “The Social Construction of Disability.” Wendall made the point that besides physical and mental disabilities, the pace of society can create disabilities. Peggy’s comment coincides with this in that American society desires the maximum efficiency from a person. The disability of the child slows down the family so that they can no longer keep up with the pace of society and thus, the family considers the child a burden.

I also thought it was interesting how Fadiman gave a brief insight into how the Hmong culture regarded babies with deformities. She included a passage by the anthropologist George M. Scott Jr. who described how children with abnormalities were observed to be given greater affection because the parents believed that the “deformity was the consequence of past transgressions on the part of the parents and thus must be borne with equanimity and treated with kindness as mean of expiation.” (215). Fadiman gave the example a Hmong father did not want his son’s harelip to be surgically repaired because he believed it was his punishment from the spirit of a bird he had killed. By fixing the harelip the father would be refusing punishment which would be offensive to the spirit.

The care that the Lees have given to Lia came not only from love but from the influence of the Hmong culture as well. So I wonder then how different the care given to Lia in her vegetative state would have been if the Lees had assimilated to Western culture?