The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (1997, Hardcover) 
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (1997, Hardcover)

 
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (1997, Hardcover)

Author: Anne Fadiman
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Publication Date: 1997-09-01
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0374267812
ISBN-13: 9780374267810
Product ID: EPID432668
Description: The author tells the story of the Lees, a family of Hmong refugees in California whose epileptic baby daughter, Lia, is taken in hand by the Western medical establishment. The Lees believe that Lia's condition is caused by spirits called...
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down : Anne Fadiman (Hardcover, 1997)
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down : Anne Fadiman (Hardcover, 1997)
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down : Anne Fadiman (Hardcover, 1997)
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Synopsis
The author tells the story of the Lees, a family of Hmong refugees in California whose epileptic baby daughter, Lia, is taken in hand by the Western medical establishment. The Lees believe that Lia's condition is caused by spirits called dabs, who had caught her and made her fall down. Her doctors want to treat her condition with sophisticated drugs, which her parents refuse to give her. In this sad tale of cultural misunderstanding, two incompatible worlds collide, with heart-wrenching consequences. Nominated for the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.

Details
Publication Date:1997-09-01

Size
Length:339 pages
Height:10.0 in
Width:6.5 in
Thickness:1.2 in
Weight:22.4 oz

Publisher's Note
Complex and empathetic, this title is a tragic meditation on medical culture - its rationality, its devotion, and its authority - and its inelasticity when faced with a culture such as the Hmong's, which is not rational and does not acknowledge that authority.

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 nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness and healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while the medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down moves from hospital corridors to healing ceremonies, and from the hill country of Laos to the living rooms of Merced, uncovering in its path the complex sources and implications of two dramatically clashing worldviews.

Industry Reviews
"Ms. Fadiman tells her story with a novelist's grace, playing the role of cultural broker, comprehending those who do not comprehend each other and perceiving what might have been done or said to make the outcome different. She has read widely in the anthropological literature on the Hmong....[T]he value of Ms. Fadiman's book is its clarity about just how vast is the difference between Hmong animism and Western science. Her story is a gripping and poignant one at the center of which is an exceedingly likable and honorable family, the Lees, whose love for their afflicted daughter is wondrously unconditional but whose superstitious world view maintains an iron grip on their minds."
New York Times - Richard Bernstein (09/24/1997)

"A brilliant study in cross-cultural medicine."
Sawyer

"[Fadiman] describes with extraordinary skill the colliding worlds of Western medicine and Hmong culture...yet she remains exquisitely attuned to the interconnectedness of things."
Bhabha

"Fadiman's book is superb, informal cultural anthropology - eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging."
Washington Post Book World - Carole Horn (02/15/1998)

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