Book
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
by Anne Fadiman
- Published
- 1997
- Genre
- Nonfiction
- Publisher
- Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
- Pages
- 341
- URL
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609.The_Spirit_Catches_You_and_You_Fall_Down?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_41
Reading measures
- Suggested reading age
- ages 17–18
- Ambleside year
- Year 12 onwards · ages 17–20
An Ambleside year is a year of the Ambleside Online programme, not a reader's age. Year 0 is its first year, and a book used over several years shows the span. The ages beside it are that band offered two grades up and none down, which is how we offer a band; they are a placement, not a reading measure.
Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, 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.
ISBN
- ISBN-13
- 9781511394949
- ISBN-10
- 1511394943
Tags
CultureFamily LifeMedicineMemoir