The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

At this point, Fadiman focuses on the concept of immigration and assimilation. She explains that Foua and Nao Kao, like many older Hmongs, didn’t speak any English after 17 years of living in the United States. They also still celebrated only Hmong holidays, only practiced Hmong religion, and only ate Hmong food. “It would be hard to imagine anything further from the vaunted American ideal of assimilation, in which immigrants are expected to submerge their cultural differences in order to embrace a shared national identity,” she writes.

Fadiman suggests several reasons why Hmongs did not assimilate into American culture (other than the fact that doing so went against their propensity to resist cultural change). First and foremost, the Hmong—unlike other immigrant populations—didn’t come to the United States to enjoy Americanized lifestyles, they came to escape violence and persecution in their own country. Furthermore, the possibility of integration wasn’t helped by the fact that many clans were divided in the process of settling in the United States, essentially estranging them and making them feel alone. Isolated from their families and “traditional supports,” these Hmong populations were extra susceptible to anxiety and depression and less likely to adopt new modes of living. To make matters worse, American culture required the Hmong to act in so many seemingly peculiar ways that many of the new immigrants were overwhelmed.

Just as Hmongs found Americans hard to understand, many US citizens were bewildered by this onslaught of foreigners whose cultural values were so different than their own. Simply put, many Americans did not graciously accept the Hmong. Rather, they lampooned them in nationwide publications as “the most primitive refugee group in America” and refused to acknowledge their involvement in the Quiet War—a war about which most American citizens had never even heard. Americans also showed frustration at the Hmong unwillingness to integrate and assimilate. Rumors abounded, hate crimes rose in frequency, and anti-Asian bigotry proliferated amongst students and adults alike. Fadiman quotes an anthropologist who wrote that, when asked why “his people did not ‘fight back’ when attacked” in America, a Hmong man replied, “because nothing here is worth defending to us.” Many Hmong also chose to run away from local violence by moving to different cities.

Because California was a good place for farming, the Hmong began migrating west, which strained the welfare system. The Central Valley of California suddenly gained 20,000 Hmong residents in just seven years, residents who ended up having to compete with unemployed non-Hmong Americans for low-paying jobs. Because most Hmongs had begun staying with their own families, though, the government resettlement programs had no control over where they went. As such, towns like Merced suddenly overflowed with unemployed new residents.

The Hmong slowly proved themselves to be good, diligent workers in the American workforce. For the most part, they filled low-paying positions. However, those living in areas with high unemployment rates found themselves without work and relying on government assistance. With the threat of the 1996 welfare reform bill—which, if passed, would deny immigrants welfare benefits—many Hmong tried to apply for legal citizenship. Even if this worked, though, most Hmong still resented the fact that the US shamed them for accepting welfare, for many of them claimed that these benefits had been promised to them by the CIA when they or their family members fought communism in Laos.

Fadiman notes that most Hmong liked to believe they would someday return to Laos. However, the country they had in mind was a pre-war Laos that no longer existed. Still, it was no wonder they wanted to leave the United States, a country that effectively subverted their hierarchies. Fadiman considers something a psychologist pointed out to her at a conference on Southeast Asian mental health: in Laos, the eldest male was the most powerful and respected member of a Hmong family, but in America young teenage daughters fluent in English often held the most cultural and social currency, a fact that turned family structures upside down in a process known to sociologists as “role loss.” Worse, Hmong parents were made to watch as their children grew up without their traditional tastes and customs, requesting American food for dinner and leading lives as individuals immersed in a different culture.

Sukey Waller told Fadiman a story in which an old Hmong man asked, “Why, when what we did worked so well for two hundred years, is everything breaking down?” Fadiman notes that she understands the sentiment, but disagrees with this man’s idea that “everything is breaking down.” “I can think of no other group of immigrants whose culture, in its most essential aspects, has been so little eroded by assimilation,” she writes. Still, she understands that the Hmong had little to be optimistic about, telling a story about one of the Lees’ relatives who confided that, though he was confident that his children would prosper in America, he had “no hope” for himself.