Library: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: Common Read

Check out a copy from the Library!

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Call Number: RA418.5.T73 F33 2012

From the publisher:

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.

About the Book

First chapter
Read the first chapter of The Spirit Catches You online, courtesy of the publisher.
Review from New York Times
"Ms. Fadiman tells her story with a novelist's grace, playing the role of cultural broker, comprehending those who do not comprehend each other and perceiving what might have been done or said to make the outcome different. She has read widely in the anthropological literature on the Hmong, the mountain people of Laos who, having fought on the American side during the Vietnam war, ended up fleeing their homes when the war was lost."

About the Author

photo by Connie Miller

Anne Fadiman
Anne Fadiman is an author, essayist, editor, and teacher. Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, tells the story of an epileptic Hmong child and her family living in Merced, California. Fadiman's sensitive, incisive treatment of the unbreachable gulf between the Hmong and American medical systems won her a National Book Critics’ Circle Award.
Interview with the author
READING ’TIL 3:00 AM: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE FADIMAN

How was this book selected?

Common Reading Selection Committee, 2017

Michele Van Hoeck, Chair, Dean of Library

Julie Chisholm, Culture & Communication faculty

Britt Elliott, Marine Transportation faculty

Margot Hanson, Library faculty

Mike Holden, Mechanical Engineering faculty

Andre Jimenez, Bookstore

Elaine Kociolek, Student Engagement & Academic Support

Alex Parker, Science & Math faculty

Amy Parsons, Culture & Communication faculty

Martin Shimada, student

Aparna Sinha, Culture & Communication faculty

Calee Spinney, Residence Life

Marissa Sutro, Marine Transportation faculty

More about the Common Reading Program objectives, selection criteria, and finalists