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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997) (edit title/settings)

A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

by Anne Fadiman (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

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... read more

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First Sentence edit see section history

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.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Preface

1. Birth
2. Fish Soup
3. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
4. Do Doctors Eat Brains?
5. Take as Directed
6. High-Velocity Transcortical Lead Therapy
7. Government Property
8. Foua and Nao Kao
9. A Little Medicine and a Little Neeb
10. War
11. The Big One
12. Flight
13. Code X
14. The Melting Pot
15. Gold and Dross
16. Why Did They Pick Merced?
17. The Eight Questions
18. The Life of the Soul
19. The Sacrifice

Note on Hmong Orthography, Pronunciation, and Quotations
Notes on Sources
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Anne Fadiman (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1997
ISBN: 978-0374267810
Page Count: 355

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: RA418.5.T73F33
  • Dewey: 306.461

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • New York Times: Margalit Fox writes about Lia Lee in the New York Times, featured on the Times website.

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