By: Anne Fadiaman
Kim Callahan
Chapter summaries
Chapters 1-2
The First two chapters gives a summary of the background of the Hmong and their way of life. How they give birth, the woman doing it alone in her house, to how they fought for themselves and how they want to live. To be left alone and left to live the way they want to live, without bothering anyone.
Chapter 3 � The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
This chapter is about Lia and her parents first bringing her to MCMC where she is treated for epilepsy and finally diagnosed right. This chapter also shows how the Hmong see this disease as a blessing rather then a problem, since those that come down with this disease often turn into �shamans� and are seen as blessed. They also see this disease as a problem of the soul being lost or taken away, which they call �The spirit catches you and you fall down�, hence the name of the chapter.
Chapter 4 � Do Doctors eat brains?
This is a very short chapter about a woman going back to a refugee camp and talking to the Hmong there about her life in America. Most of the Hmong that show up there ask her questions about American doctors and their misconceived ideas about them. It also gives insite as to why these people feel this way, because of their beliefs and the differences in western medicine and their cures.
Chapter 5 � Take as Directed
This chapter, as might be assumed by the title, is about Lia and her medications. It introduces her two main doctors, Neil Ernst and Peggy Philip, (who are married), and talks about all of the times that Lia was admitted into MCMC to be treated for her seizures. It tells how the doctors kept changing her medication amounts and how Foua and Nao Kao couldn�t follow the right amounts, and that it would be hard for them, even if they could read English. It gives nurse accounts of home visits, and blood tests that give evidence that the Lee�s weren�t giving Lia enough medication or too much. Because of all this, Neil decided that he had to send in a report of child abuse because Lia wasn�t getting the right amount of meds, and that could put her life at risk. At the end of the chapter Lia is taken away.
Chapter 6 � High-Velocity Transcortical Lead Therapy
This chapter is about the difficulties between doctors and the Hmong people, how they have problems because of the language barrier and also because the cultures are so different and the beliefs of each of them differ as well. It proves problematic. And a doctor had stated that they thought the best thing for their Hmong patients was High-Velocity Transcortical Lead Therapy (Being Shot in the Head). And I think that it fits the title of this chapter perfectly because it shows the frustration and complete lack of knowledge that these doctors had as well as a sense of hopelessness.
Chapter 7 � Government Property
This chapter is about when Neil, Lia�s doctor at MCMC had filed a report with CPS to have Lia taken away and put into foster care. It talks of how the Lee�s didn�t know what was going on, except that their daughter was taken from them, and they thought it was because the doctors were mad at them, so they were being punished. It talks about how Lia acted after she was taken into foster care, and how her foster parents fell in love with her and over time, fell in love with her parents. It also goes into the fact that after six months, the courts deemed the Lee�s still unfit to take care of their daughter. Also about Jeanine Hilt and how she tried to help train the Lee�s to know what to give Lia and the right amount of medication. The chapter is named properly in my opinion because of how Lia basically became government property by being taken away and put into foster care.