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BookmarkLia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy.
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By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling.
Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes.
People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." .
For more information about the title The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter — Attempting to demythologize the process of dying, Nuland explores how we shall die, each of us in a way that will be unique. Through particular ... > read more
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books) — An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and ... > read more
1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina — Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New ... > read more
