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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California, case studies, epilepsy in children, Hmong American children, intercultural communication, medical care, medicine

This is one of my favorite non-fiction books “that reads like fiction”. When Lia Lee, the 13th child in a family of Hmong refugees who had settled in Merced, was three months old, she was diagnosed with severe epilepsy. The series of events that cascaded from this diagnosis illustrate the potential thorniness of cross cultural interactions. Everyone wanted the best for Lia – especially her devoted parents and the dedicated doctors and staff at the hospital where she was repeatedly treated.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award

“Superb, informal cultural anthropology–eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging.” ―Carole Horn, The Washington Post Book World

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down changed how doctors see themselves and how they see their patients. Anne Fadiman celebrates the complexity and the individuality of the human interactions that make up the practice of medicine while simultaneously pointing out directions for change and breaking readers’ hearts with the tragedies of cultural displacement, medical limitations, and futile good intentions.” ―Perri Klass, M.D., author of A Not Entirely Benign Procedure

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The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

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hermits, Maine, nature, recluses, Smithfield region, solitude, survival, thieves

If you have ever dreamed of getting away from it all, then this is the book for you!

In 1986, a young man seeking a quiet and peaceful life, drove his car into the back woods of Maine, left the keys on the dashboard and disappeared for 27 years.  Where did he sleep, what did he eat, how did he survive the black fly season and the rain and the bitter cold and was he ever lonely?  All these questions and many more will be answered.  P.S. This book has a Metrowest Boston connection.

“A story that takes the two primary human relationships—to nature and to one another—and deftly upends our assumptions about both. This was a breathtaking book to read and many weeks later I am still thinking about the implications for our society and—by extension—for my own life.”—Sebastian Junger

“An absorbing exploration of solitude and man’s eroding relationship with the natural world. Though the ‘stranger’ in the title is Knight, one closes the book with the sense that Knight, like all seers, is the only sane person in a world gone insane—that modern civilization has made us strangers to ourselves.”—Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic

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