In his movie Gran Torino Clint Eastwood plays an old racist whose neighbors are Hmong. The Hmong is a South East Asian mountain people who were forced to relocate during and after the war in Vietnam. Many were recruited by the CIA and fought on the American side.Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is one of the best books I have ever read. It tells the story of a Hmong family, a sick daughter, and their meeting with the American health care system. It's heartbreaking, and you learn more than you want to know about cultural differences, and how people manage, and not, to work around them.
3 comments:
Gran Torino was recommended to me recently by a reader of my own blog, as something he thought I'd particularly like. We recently moved from a small city with a big Hmong population. Little has been done to educate the public about why they're there. There are some pretty serious gang problems too. I intend to see this with my teen son.
Thanks to you, I know what Hmong is. Thanks for adding this book to our course :0) I still think about the book when I hear of Hmong.
- Noel
Indie, look for the book! It's amazing.
Noel, do you remember your placenta-paper?
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