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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

Brief Description: Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. Marc Notes: Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.;Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-340) and index. Table of...

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Print Books

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Spiral Binding

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Brief Description:
Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.

Marc Notes:
Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.;Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-340) and index.

Table of Contents:
Preface -- 1. Birth -- 2. Fish Soup -- 3. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down -- 4. Do Doctors Eat Brains? -- 5. Take as Directed -- 6. High-Velocity Transcortical head Therapy -- 7. Government Property -- 8. Foua and Nao Kao -- 9. A Little Medicine and a Little Neeb -- 10. War -- 11. The Big One -- 12. Flight -- 13. Code X -- 14. The Melting Pot -- 15. Gold and Dross -- 16. Why Did They Pick Merced? -- 17. The Eight Questions -- 18. The Life or the Soul -- 19. The Sacrifice -- Afterword to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition -- Note on Hmong Orthography, Pronunciation, and Quotations -- Notes on Sources -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Review Quotes:

"Superb, informal cultural anthropology--eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging." --Carole Horn, The Washington Post Book World

"This is a book that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who has given so much as a moment's thought to the state of American medicine. But it is much more . . . People are presented as [Fadiman] saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." -- Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic

" The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down changed how doctors see themselves and how they see their patients. Anne Fadiman celebrates the complexity and the individuality of the human interactions that make up the practice of medicine while simultaneously pointing out directions for change and breaking readers' hearts with the tragedies of cultural displacement, medical limitations, and futile good intentions." -- Perri Klass, M.D., author of A Not Entirely Benign Procedure



Biographical Note:
Anne Fadiman was born in New York City and was raised in Connecticut and Los Angeles. After graduating from Harvard, she worked as a wilderness instructor in Wyoming before returning to New York to write. She has been a staff writer at Life, editor-at-large of Civilization, and editor of The American Scholar. Fadiman is also the author of Ex Libris and At Large and At Small, and the editor of Rereadings. She now lives with her family in western Massachusetts and serves as the Francis Writer-in-Residence at Yale.

Publisher Marketing:
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely independent people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.

Publisher Marketing:

Now with a new Afterword from the author

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy.

Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award, Anne Fadiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest.

______


Lia Lee 1982-2012

Lia Lee died on August 31, 2012. She was thirty years old and had been in a vegetative state since the age of four. Until the day of her death, her family cared for her lovingly at home.



Review Citations:

  • Christian Century 10/14/2015 pg. 39 (EAN 9780374533403, Paperback)
  • Wilson Nonfiction Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780374533403, Paperback)
  • Wilson Senior High Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780374533403, Paperback)
  • Publishers Weekly 08/11/1997 pg. 393 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • Kirkus Reviews 08/01/1997 pg. 1177 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
  • Booklist 09/15/1997 pg. 184 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • Library Journal 09/01/1997 pg. 209 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
  • New York Times 10/19/1997 pg. 28 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • NY Times Notable Bks of Year 01/01/1997 pg. 76 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • LJ Best Books of Year 01/01/1998 pg. 53 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • NY Times Notable Bks of Year 01/01/1998 pg. 76 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • School Library Journal 03/01/1998 pg. 246 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • Wilson Nonfiction Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)
  • Wilson Senior High Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780374267810, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:Fadiman, Anne
Anne Fadiman is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Frog (2026) . Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Salon Book Award. In 2017, she published The Wine Lover's Daughter, a memoir about her father. Fadiman has also written two essay collections, Ex Libris and At Large and At Small, and edited Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. She is Professor in the Practice of English and Francis Writer in Residence at Yale.


Author: Fadiman, Anne
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Binding: Paperback
Pub Date: 2012-04-24
BISAC: Medical / Ethics|Social Science / Disease & Health Issues|Social Science / Minority Studies|Family & Relationships / General|History / Civilization|Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social|Medical / Pediatrics|Social Science / Refugees
Subjects: Hmong American children|Medical care|Hmong Americans|Medicine|Intercultural communication|Epilepsy in children|Transcultural medical care|California
Weight: 0.7 lbs
ISBN: 9780374533403
ASIN: -
SKU: SP-9780374533403

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