The release date for the English version of 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures' by
Anne Fadiman is Jan 2007. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Born in 1982 into a Hmong immigrant household, Lia Lee had epileptic symptoms from an early age. After a terrible cycle of miscommunication, overmedication, and cultural conflict, she was living at home in 1988 but had become brain dead: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is written with the most intense human emotion. Regarding the story, Sherwin Nuland said, "Fadiman's narrative lacks both heroes and villains. People are shown as she saw them, with all of their vulnerability, dignity, and humility.