Nonfiction by Anne Faidman
Lia Lee was born in Merced, California, in 1982, the twelfth child of parents who were in a large group of Hmong refugees who had fled Laos and Vietnam. Lia was born with epilepsy, which in the Hmong language is literally translated as “the spirit catches you and you fall down,” and is in their culture often a sign of a shaman.
Still, Lia’s seizures are severe and terrifying, and her parents are in and out of the Merced County Hospital ER many times. But there follows a huge culture clash between American medical care and the traditional Hmong ideas of treatment. Both Mr. and Mrs. Lee and the hospital care team subsequently blame each other bitterly for Lia’s failure to get better.
This story is about why they are both wrong to blame the other, but at the same time it is about why neither side is at fault. It’s a really interesting book.
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