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Jan. 5th, 2012 04:09 pmThis write-up is long overdue -- ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti lent me the book sometime in August -- but Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down made an enormous impression on me in a way that I wasn't really sure how to put into words, and still am not quite.
I will freely admit I was wary going in. The book traces the case of Lia Lee, a Hmong immigrant child with a severe seizure disorder, and the clashes and miscommunications between her family and the doctors treating her disease. There are a few things I was worried this book might be:
- a voyeuristic indictment of the quaint, ignorant customs of the Hmong and their tragic inability to adapt to modern life
- one nice white lady's effort to pat herself on the back for being so understanding about the quaint, ignorant customs of the Hmong
- a vicious attack on the failures of the medical profession and the uncaring US hospital system
Miraculously, Anne Fadiman somehow manages to walk the very narrow line of telling the story of a terrible case of cultural misunderstanding and miscommunication without privileging one culture over another, even though one is her own; of showing everyone's mistakes without dehumanizing or othering anybody involved; and of clearly stating her own biases and involvement in the story without making it a story about herself or taking the attention away from where it should be, which is on Lia and her family.
I know! I didn't think it was possible either!
It's a long book, but every bit of length is cultural context for something, and, in my opinion at least, it's all important, and all absolutely worth it. (For the record, my mom is a neurologist specializing in seizure disorders, so I have at least a little bit more than the layperson's knowledge of the current handling of epilepsy in US medicine. That may have affected the way I read the book, but I don't think it did except in a general way. The book is about much broader issues than epilepsy.) I would recommend it to almost anyone; I hear it is currently required reading in a number of medical programs, and I'm glad. It should be.
genarti lent me the book sometime in August -- but Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down made an enormous impression on me in a way that I wasn't really sure how to put into words, and still am not quite.I will freely admit I was wary going in. The book traces the case of Lia Lee, a Hmong immigrant child with a severe seizure disorder, and the clashes and miscommunications between her family and the doctors treating her disease. There are a few things I was worried this book might be:
- a voyeuristic indictment of the quaint, ignorant customs of the Hmong and their tragic inability to adapt to modern life
- one nice white lady's effort to pat herself on the back for being so understanding about the quaint, ignorant customs of the Hmong
- a vicious attack on the failures of the medical profession and the uncaring US hospital system
Miraculously, Anne Fadiman somehow manages to walk the very narrow line of telling the story of a terrible case of cultural misunderstanding and miscommunication without privileging one culture over another, even though one is her own; of showing everyone's mistakes without dehumanizing or othering anybody involved; and of clearly stating her own biases and involvement in the story without making it a story about herself or taking the attention away from where it should be, which is on Lia and her family.
I know! I didn't think it was possible either!
It's a long book, but every bit of length is cultural context for something, and, in my opinion at least, it's all important, and all absolutely worth it. (For the record, my mom is a neurologist specializing in seizure disorders, so I have at least a little bit more than the layperson's knowledge of the current handling of epilepsy in US medicine. That may have affected the way I read the book, but I don't think it did except in a general way. The book is about much broader issues than epilepsy.) I would recommend it to almost anyone; I hear it is currently required reading in a number of medical programs, and I'm glad. It should be.
