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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors,
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures Paperback - 2012

by Anne Fadiman

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This seller has earned a 4.13 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.13 / 5 (56 total reviews)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.

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

Review summary

This seller has earned a 4.13 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.13 / 5 (56 total reviews)

Reviewers praised the book’s rigorous reporting and rich cultural context on the Hmong, noting it focuses more on background than on a single case. They found it still timely, both engrossing and at times infuriating as it exposes failures on both the family’s and U.S. doctors’ sides. Many recommended it, especially for those working across cultures.

Readers say this book is:
insightfulculturally richrelevantcompellingwell-writtennuancedengrossingoccasionally infuriatingbalancedrecommended

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From the publisher

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.

Details

  • Title The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
  • Author Anne Fadiman
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: First
  • Pages 368
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
  • Publication date 2012-04-24
  • Features Bibliography, Index
  • ISBN 9780374533403 / 0374533407
  • Weight 0.7 lbs (0.32 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 in (20.57 x 13.72 x 2.54 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Asian - General
    • Ethnic Orientation: Asian - General
  • Category Sociology
  • Library of Congress subjects Intercultural communication, Epilepsy in children
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2013370009
  • Dewey Decimal Code 306.461

Media reviews

Citations

  • Christian Century, 10/14/2015, Page 39

About the author

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

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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (FSG Classics) by Anne Fadiman (2012-04-24)

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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (FSG Classics) by Anne Fadiman (2012-04-24)

by Fadiman, Anne

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

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by Fadiman, Anne

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