Joseph
Melanson
Creative
Nonfiction II
Prof.
Cahan
20
August 2012
A Literary Analysis of Do Doctors Eat Brains? by Anne Fadiman as it applies to the criteria
of Literary Journalism
Literary journalism mixes reportage
with a personal intimacy of the writer, relating a tale with skillful use of
language. Instead of traditional journalism’s focus on the cold facts, literary
journalism puts us in the scene with its characters, showing through its
characters their perspectives. In this way we arrive at an understanding without
the journalist being strong presence within the story, yet still we come to understand
the true meaning of what the piece of literary journalism is trying to express.
When it is successful, the piece of literary journalism allows us to reexamine
our own world through the lens of the article or essay. “Do Doctors Eat
Brains?” by Anne Fadiman one finds an example of literary journalism as it
meets the criteria of the genre.
Anne Fadiman in her essay “Do Doctors Eat Brains?”
relates the dichotomy between the Hmong people of Laos in the refugee camps of
Thailand, and their culture of shamanistic healers, homeopathic types of
medicine, and their reaction to Western medicine. Fadiman’s essay also gives us
the perspectives of the western doctors and nurses that staff the medical
camps, and their practices which often contradicts the Hmong’s cultural
beliefs. Anne Fadiman is absent in her tale in this contrast of opposites, rather
we are given a narrative that intertwines the opposing cultures. She immerses
us in the Hmong culture of superstition and belief in shamanistic healers who
battle the spirits whom they believe cause sickness, the use of dermal
treatments like acupuncture, and herbalism, versus the typical procedures and
practices of western medicine with its focus on taking samples of body fluids,
vaccinations for illnesses that they do not have, and dismissing the
importance, or even the existence, of the soul. In “Do Doctors Eat Brains?” by
Anne Fadiman uses the genre of literary journalism to demonstrate a clash of cultures.
Literary Journalism, according to Perl and Schwartz,
“combines investigative reporting with personal voice, story telling, and
memorable language” (13).
Fadiman begins her essay by opening
with the return of Mao Thao, a “Hmong woman from Laos who had resettled in St.
Paul, Minnesota” who returned to “Ban Vinai, the
refugee camp in Thailand
where she had lived for a year after her escape from Laos in 1975” (304). “She was the
firs Hmong-American ever to return there, and when an officer of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which administered the camp, asked her
to speak about life in the United States, 15,000 Hmong, more than a third of
the population of Ban Vinai, assembled in a soccer field and questioned her for
nearly four hours” (Fadiman 304) . Mao Thao was asked many questions such as:
“Is it forbidden to use a txiv neeb”, or a shaman, “to heal an illness in the United States?”
(304) “Why do American doctors take so much blood from their patients?”
(Fadiman 304). “After you die”, one question went “why do American doctors try
to open up your head and take out your brains?” (Fadiman 304). Another question
Thao was asked was “Do American doctors eat the livers, kidneys, and brains of
Hmong patients?” (Fadiman 304). And in
another instance a refugee wondered “When Hmong people die in the United States,
is it true that they are cut into pieces and put in tin cans and sold as food?”
(Fadiman 304).
Rather than the cold, objective
reportage of traditional journalism, with its center on the facts; the who,
what, when, where, and why that only tells us what had occurred, instead
literary journalism immerses us in the scene of the event being studied, and
into the perspectives and experiences of the characters that had experienced
it. (13). Fadiman relates in her essay “Do Doctors Eat Brains?”, the
perspectives of various people who had inhabited the medical camps with which
the essay is set, immersing us into the experience of the camp.
Anne Fadiman balances her essay by
relating the perspectives of the Hmong people for whom the medical camps were
built. In one instance she relates the experience of a Hmong couple named Foua
Yang and Nao Kao Lee. When they brought their three sick children to the
hospital at Mae Jarim, Fadiman states, “they were engaging in behavior that
many of the other camp inhabitants would have considered positively aberrant”
(306). The Hmong believed that these western staffed hospitals “were regarded not
as places of healing but as charnel houses” (Fadiman 306). The Hmong had come
to believe, Fadiman states, that the hospitals were “populated by spirits of
people who had died there, a lonesome and rapacious crew who were eager to
swell their own ranks” (306).
“So I heard them tell this Hmong
minister” Fadiman quotes a Wendy Walker-Moffat, woman who had worked the Bin
Vinai camp “that if they let a shaman work in the medical center he could only
give out herbs, and not perform any actual work with the spirits” that the
Hmong believed were so important to appease for their health (307). During this
conversation the Hmong minister was asked “Now you never go to a shaman, do you?” (Fadiman 307). Being a Christian
convert, and knowing that it was a sin to lie he, he first admitted that he
did. But when the western staff of the hospital seemed to become unnerved by
this answer, the minister retracted, saying “No, no, no, I’ve never been”, and
tried to make it seem as if he misspoke restating “I’ve just heard that other people go” (Fadiman 307). What the
doctors and nurses failed to realize in all honesty, Fadiman quotes
Walker-Moffat, that “no Hmong is ever fully converted.” (307). The reason for
this Walker-Moffat is quoted by Fadiman as saying, some of the westerners who
staffed the medical camps “were there to provide medical aid, but they were
also there – though not overtly – to convert people” and one “part of becoming
converted was believing in Western medicine” (Fadiman 306).
There’s a strong authorial presence
even if the “I” is mainly a guide, rather than a key character.” (13). Fadiman
relates her essay through the various characters of her essay, the Hmong, and
the western medical workers letting them relate the story without making it
known whether or not she ever set foot inside one of these camps or only pieced
together her essay from those who did. Fadiman through her essay though, lets us
feel as if we are truly there, witnessing events as these people did, and
experiencing both sides of opposing cultures.
“Rather than just tell what happened”, literary
journalists “show characters and scene”
in order to take the reader to the “deeper levels” that give the true meaning
to the “facts” (Perl and Schwartz 14). The difference, according to Perl and
Schwarz, separates “straight journalism, the apparent subject (what happened),
from literary journalism, or the real
subject (what the events mean)” (13). Fadiman writes about Dwight Conquergood
who was hired to improve the participation of the Hmong in the medical camps.
His first challenge Fadiman writes “came after an outbreak of rabies among the camp
dogs prompted a mass dog-vaccination campaign by the medical staff, during which
the Ban Vinai inhabitants failed to bring in a single dog to be inoculated”
(308). Asked to design a new campaign he came up with the idea for what he
called “Rabies Parade, a procession led by three important characters from
Hmong folktales – a tiger, a chicken, and a dab”
or jungle spirit “– dressed in homemade costumes” (308). “The cast, like its
audience”, Fadiman states “was one hundred percent Hmong (308).
“As the parade snaked through the camp, the tiger danced and
played the qeej, the dab sang and
banged a drum, and the chicken (chosen for this crucial role because of its traditional
powers of augury)” or divination, explained the cause “of rabies through a bullhorn”
(Fadiman 308). “The next morning”, Fadiman states “the vaccination stations
were so besieged by dogs – dogs carried in their owner’s arms, dogs dragged on rope
leashes, dogs rolled in on two-wheeled push carts – that the health workers
could hardly inoculate them fast enough” (308). “Conquergood’s next
production”, Fadiman states, was “a sanitation campaign in which a parade of
children led by Mother Clean (a huge, insanely grinning figure on a bamboo
frame) and the Garbage Troll (dressed in ragged clothes plastered with trash)
sang songs about latrine use and refuse disposal, was equally well received”
(308).
When literary journalism is working
well, Perl and Schwartz state, “readers not only enter our worlds, but they
reenter their own worlds in new ways (14).
Fadiman summarizes the problem of the cultural
misunderstanding which held back the promise of the camp by quoting
Conquergood. “In his opinion”, Fadiman states “the physicians and nurses at Ban
Vinai failed to win the cooperation of the camp inhabitants because they
considered the relationship one-sided, with the Westerners holding all the
knowledge” (308). “As long as they persisted in this view, Conquergood believed
that what the medical establishment was offering would continue to be rejected,
since the Hmong would view it not as a gift but as a form of coercion” (Fadiman
309).
Works
Cited:
Fadiman,
Anne., “Do Doctors Eat Brains?” Writing
True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Eds. Sondra Perl, Mimi
Schwartz. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company. 304-309. 2006. Print.
Joseph, thank you for your detailed
analysis of Fadiman’s essay, clearly explaining how “Do Doctors Eat
Brains?” meets the criteria for literary journalism as defined in the
course textbook. I like how you offer plenty of specific facts,
examples, reasons, quotes and explanations to support your general
assertions, and how well you organize the overall details by stating the
textbook’s definitions and then demonstrating that these definitions
are surely manifested in Fadiman’s work. Please note that there likely
was some misunderstanding of the literary journalism writing assignment
option, as the assignment is to write an original piece of literary
journalism rather than to analyze a literary journalism essay.
Nevertheless, your diligent effort processing/developing this analysis
from beginning to end is quite evident. Grade for Essay 3 is B. 84%.
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