The spirit catches you and you fall down
a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
by Anne Fadiman
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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. -- Provided by Publisher on back cover.
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Subjects
Asian Americans, Attitude, Attitude of Health Personnel, Child, Communication, Complementary Therapies, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Cultural Diversity, Disease, Emigration and immigration, Epilepsy, Family Relations, Hmong, Home care services, Hospitals, Infant, Labor, Obstetric, Medicine, Traditional, Merced Community Medical Center (CA), Nurses, Obstetric Labor, Parent-Child Relations, Patient Care, Patient compliance, Persistent Vegetative State, Physicians, Professional-Family Relations, Professional-Patient Relations, Religion, Social Work, Social values, Traditional medicine, Treatment Refusal, Vietnam Conflict, Transcultural medical care, Hmong (asian people), united states, Intercultural communication, Hmong Americans, Epilepsy in children, Medical care, Case studies, Medicine, Hmong American children, New York Times reviewed, Cultural, Disease & health issues, Social sciences -> anthropology -> cultural anthropology, Social sciences -> sociology -> sociology of health, Fiction, psychological, Man-woman relationships, fiction, New york (n.y.), fiction, Authors, fiction, Reading Level-Grade 7, Reading Level-Grade 9, Reading Level-Grade 8, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, Case Reports, Geneeskunde, Kulturkonflikt, Volksgeneeskunde, Ärztliche Behandlung, nyt:religion-spirituality-and-faith=2014-09-07, New York Times bestsellerPeople
Lia LeePlaces
California, Laos, United StatesShowing 5 featured editions. View all 19 editions?
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1
The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
2012, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
- Paperback edition.
0374533407 9780374533403
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2
The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
1998, Noonday Press
in English
0374525641 9780374525644
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3
The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
1998, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
in English
- 1st pbk. ed.
0374525641 9780374525644
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
1997, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
in English
- 1st ed.
0374267812 9780374267810
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
"With a new afterword by the author"--Cover.
"Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award"--Cover.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-340) and index.
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First Sentence
"If Lia Lee had been born in the highlands of northwest Laos, where her parents and twelve of her brothers and sisters were born, her mother would have squatted on the floor of the house that her father had built from ax-hewn planks thatched with bamboo and grass."
Work Description
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.
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| January 27, 2026 | Edited by Drini | merge authors |
| January 27, 2026 | Edited by Drini | Edited without comment. |
| January 27, 2026 | Edited by Drini | Merge works |
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