FSG Classics The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, (Paperback)

from labfs39

I loved everything about this book: the story of Lia Lee, the description of the medical dilemma facing the doctors, the theorizing about cultural clashes, the history of the Hmong. Anne Fadiman writes clearly and compellingly about a complex case, and it reads like fiction. I was fascinated by t...

from bouillabaisse

Superb. I can see why Robert Coles compares this to James Agee's and George Orwell's journalism. Excellent cross-cultural analysis of several different cultures--Hmong, medical field (including differences between clinics and hospitals), social workers, CPS, interpreters, &c.--by way of first lea...

from SheTreadsSoftly

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman is a balanced account of the clash between a Hmong family and Western medicine. Fadiman follows how the medical community handled or mishandled the case of Lia Lee, and...

from Elaine

Liked it... more as I kept reading... you have to concentrate but it is worth the effort. It made me ask myself what we did to the Indians... if this was done so many years later... irresponsible!!!!!!

from brenzi

This book broke my heart. It made me angry. It enlightened me. I came out of the reading of it a different person. And it had me scratching my head, once again, at the inept handling of an immigrant issue by the United States government. On the surface, the book is about the care that Lia Lee, an...