William Hay and The Hmong

Written by Max Soroka, a UConn student, with support from the DAC team

Context: While taking the advanced seminar in Disability Documentary and Narrative at the University of Connecticut we had numerous opportunities to connect the literary works we were exploring. I wrote the following piece in response to a prompt asking to compare and contrast William Hay’s perspective of disability with Hmong culture from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. William Hay was an early disability advocate during the 18th century who believed in strengthening his intelligence in order to have his voice heard by the British public. I found similarities with that type of work ethic in Fadiman’s work which explores the spiritual significance epilepsy had in Hmong culture.

William Hay’s subtle pride and arrogance in his disability, conveyed through his work Deformity: An Essay, eloquently delivers a refreshing perspective on the gravity that weighs on the disabled community. His slightly positive tone really resonated with me as I read it. It stuck out as a different form of ideology than the other disabled authors we have read this semester. Arthur Frank’s The Wounded Storyteller and Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were both beautiful well-written works, but had an essence of melancholy to them, a sense of loss in comparison to the average capable population. This somber tone seemed innate in most works addressing disability given the way society addressed those of us who were born differently or suffered a life-changing accident. It wasn’t until I began reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman that I was able to see a similar sense of pride in the disabled community. The Hmong culture we learn about in this novel saw epilepsy as a spiritual gift that brought an individual closer to divinity. Epilepsy, a condition that can induce seizures, had been looked at as a deficit in a majority of other cultures previously. A favorable attitude towards disability that was demonstrated through this work stood out to me immediately once again. All I could think about was what Hay would’ve thought if he was aware of this culturally accepting attitude of a form of disability. 

In Hmong culture a spiritual guide and healer is known as a txiv neeb. They are responsible for facilitating rituals that treat ailments of other members of their community. They are entrusted with this responsibility because many txiv neeb have quag dab peg which translates to the title of this novel, also known as epilepsy. In this culture it is believed that the seizures caused by epilepsy bring the individual closer to “the realm of the unseen”, their concepts of a higher power. It contrasts heavily with the Zimbabwe cultural approach of disability that we learned about through Prudence’s story which equated to a death sentence. What particularly stood out to me was an instance in the text where an individual was disqualified from becoming a Jesuit priest due to their epilepsy, but “might have been seen by the Hmong as a sign that he was particularly fit for divine office.” (Fadiman 21). This line in particular launched a strong tether to William Hay. Even though Fadiman is referring to a culturally religious position in office here, Hay who also suffered from a disability, held a political position in England’s parliament. He refers to this position directly with “Among 558 Gentlemen in the House of Commons I am the only one that is so.” (Hay 27) also referencing he is the only disabled person included. Although Hay’s disability was no advantage in him achieving this political status as it is in Hmong culture, I’m sure he would’ve been fascinated and intrigued by the fact that an impairment could be seen as an asset. 

The difference here is the structure of the society that these positions of power hold as well as the means to get it. Hay had to advocate for himself with much more effort to rise in political status, while people born with epilepsy in Hmong culture are typically named txiv neeb from a very early age and it’s an honor that many do not refuse. Another difference would be the nature of the disabilities themselves. The title of Hay’s work starts with the word deformity, signifying that his disability was obviously apparent on the surface level. Epilepsy is a disorder that is primarily internal, which is not as obvious as a physical deformity. It’s only expressed externally when a seizure is happening. The lives led by the people who suffer from this disorder still have a fair share of difficulty, but to a different extent than Hay would have had with a constant disability. This factor definitely confirms that Hay’s achievement was much more difficult to accomplish, even though he would have still been interested in the Hmong cultural perspective of disability.

Another similarity that Hay would have shared with Hmong culture is the appreciation of the things an individual can offer that is not solely physical. This can be seen through the Hmong’s regard of txiv neeb with “publicly marks the txiv neeb  as a person of high moral character” (Fadiman 21). They value the importance of a healer’s morals over any fully capable human being, even if that healer may have a disability that puts them at a physical deficit to that of a healthy person. Hay even speaks to the other side of this same coin by addressing his perspective on the value of physical capability in comparison to intelligence. He asks “Is the Carcass the better part of the Man? And is it to be valued by Weight, like that of Cattle in a Market?” (Hay 25). He compares the brute force ability of a capable man to that of a cow, essentially dehumanizing men. His point being that it wasn’t physical ability that gave humankind their capability, but it was intelligence and consciousness itself, two things he worked hard to be extremely proficient in. The commonality here is that both the Hmong culture and Hay were able to use other components of being a person to help them accept and succeed with their disability. Even though they took different paths, Hay’s being more knowledge based and Hmong people’s being more spiritually based, they used it in a similar method to address disability. 

WORKS CITED

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Farrar Straus & Giroux Inc, 2007. 

Hay, William. Deformity. 1754.