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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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Amazon.com Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and... See more » Amazon.com Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal YA?A compelling anthropological study. The Hmong people in America are mainly refugee families who supported the CIA militaristic efforts in Laos. They are a clannish group with a firmly established culture that combines issues of health care with a deep spirituality that may be deemed primitive by Western standards. In Merced, CA, which has a large Hmong community, Lia Lee was born, the 13th child in a family coping with their plunge into a modern and mechanized way of life. The child suffered an initial seizure at the age of three months. Her family attributed it to the slamming of the front door by an older sister. They felt the fright had caused the baby's soul to flee her body and become lost to a malignant spirit. The report of the family's attempts to cure Lia through shamanistic intervention and the home sacrifices of pigs and chickens is balanced by the intervention of the medical community that insisted upon the removal of the child from deeply loving parents with disastrous results. This compassionate and understanding account fairly represents the positions of all the parties involved. The suspense of the child's precarious health, the understanding characterization of the parents and doctors, and especially the insights into Hmong culture make this a very worthwhile read.?Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. See less »

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From the list : books that you must not miss by maxandevelyn

Oooh, thanks for the recommendation!

I loved this book. I read it very quickly. The author has a such a gift with language. You might check out her other work of non-fiction, Ex Libris, which is devoted to her love of books and reading.

This is next on my "to buy" list. I'll let you know once I finish it- Thanks for the recommendation!

As a medical anthropologist, this book opened my eyes to the need for cultural competence. As a human being, this book showed me that every person has a story and that my duty is to be as empathic and nonjudgmental as possible. You never know whose life is in your hands.

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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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