Hmong

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne Fadiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest. ______ Lia Lee 1982-2012 Lia Lee died on August 31, 2012. She was thirty years old and had been in a vegetative state since the age of four. Until the day of her death, her family cared for her lovingly at home.

This first ethnography of the Hmong in China is based on Nicholas Tapp's extensive fieldwork in a Hmong village in Sichuan. Basing his analysis on the concepts of context and agency, Tapp discusses the "paradoxical ambivalence at the heart of Hmong culture." A paradox arises in the historical and ethnographic construction of the identity of the Hmong by conscious contrast with, and in opposition to, a majority Han Chinese identity at the same time that large parts of Hmong culture are shared with the Chinese and may be the results of historical processes of adoption, absorption, mimesis, or emulation. Tapp examines the Hmong rituals of shamanism, ancestral respect, and death and provides details on livelihood, kinship, local organization, and intellectual culture. The book is enhanced with thorough accounts of ceremonies, rituals, and folktales, with translations of Hmong songs and stories. This publication has also been published in hardback (no longer available).

America's healthcare system in the twenty-first century faces a variety of pressures and challenges, not the least of which is that posed by the increasingly multicultural nature of American society itself. Large numbers among the Hmong, immigrants from the landlocked Asian nation of Laos, continue to prefer their own ancient medical traditions. That these Hmong Americans should continue to adhere to a tradition of folk medicine, rather than embrace the modern healthcare system of America, poses questions that must be answered. This book takes up the task of examining Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In so doing, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong, specifically a target sample of Hmong Americans resident in Colorado. Drawing upon scientific methods of data collection, the research reveals attitudes currently held by a group of American citizens toward health and medicine which run the gamut from the very modern to those which have prevailed in the highlands of Southeast Asia for centuries.

Describes the traditions of the Hmong people; how they live on a daily basis; and how they are working to preserve their heritage despite technology.

Presenting a holistic perspective of the Hmong way of life, this book touches on every aspect of the Hmong culture, including an overview of their history and traditions, relationships between Hmong parents and their children, the rites and traditions of Hmong wedding and funeral ceremonies, the celebration of the Hmong New Year, home restrictions and other superstitious taboos, arts and politics. The book features and explains many Hmong words, phrases and proverbs. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Authoritative and original, Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom is among the first works of its kind, exploring the influence that French colonialism and Hmong leadership had on the Hmong people's political and social aspirations.

This book is the first to balance an account of the traditional life and history of the Hmong as a global people, with a full account of their modern, urban lives. Culture and Customs of the Hmong takes a global approach to understanding the Hmong, a people who have lived in China for more than 4,000 years. It is the first book to combine an account of the traditional life and history of the Hmong with a full account of their modern, urban lifestyle, balancing traditional lifeways and practices with modern, evolving customs. The book is unique in dealing, not only with the Hmong in the United States, Australia, and other Western nations, but also with their traditional and changing lives in their Asian homelands of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and China. This broad international perspective allows readers to look at the Hmong through the complex interplay of the many social, historical, economic, and cultural influences they have been exposed to in their worldwide migration, and at how they manage to maintain their many traditions across national boundaries and great distances.

A rich narrative history of the worldwide community of Hmong people, exploring their cultural practices, war and refugee camp experiences, and struggles and triumphs as citizens of new countries.