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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine.
When Lia Lee entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness and healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe while medical community marks a division between body and soul and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former.
Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.
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Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)
- A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying
- By: Sallie Tisdale
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.
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I thought I had more time...
- By Alyssa on 09-09-19
By: Sallie Tisdale
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Changing the Way We Die
- Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement
- By: Sheila Himmel, Fran Smith
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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There’s a quiet revolution happening in the way we die. More than 1.5 million Americans a year die in hospice care - nearly 44 percent of all deaths - and a vast industry has sprung up to meet the growing demand. Once viewed as a New Age indulgence, hospice is now a $14 billion business and one of the most successful segments in health care. Changing the Way We Die, by award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel, is the first book to take a broad, penetrating look at the hospice landscape.
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Sadly, not very engaging.
- By Debra S. Long on 06-16-18
By: Sheila Himmel, and others
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Sometimes Brilliant
- The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History
- By: Larry Brilliant
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Larry Brilliant's life journey has led him on a purposeful path across continents and countercultural movements, marching arm in arm with the men and women who defined a generation. A man who has always been in the right place at the right time, Brilliant has engaged with some of the most prominent thought leaders, spiritual masters, heroes, and icons in the world, including Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.
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Sometimes Brilliant--Brilliant
- By Dr. Sharon G. Solloway on 10-24-16
By: Larry Brilliant
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Birth
- The Surprising History of How We Are Born
- By: Tina Cassidy
- Narrated by: Angela Starling
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we're born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia, but that's about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth?
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important historical work, fascinating and fun
- By RT on 02-24-16
By: Tina Cassidy
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Keeping Hope Alive
- One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed
- By: Hawa Abdi, Sarah J. Robbins
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty.
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How Refreshing
- By Jean Watz on 07-21-14
By: Hawa Abdi, and others
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Doctored
- The Disillusionment of an American Physician
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Sandeep Jauhar, an attending cardiologist, accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths. Doctors' morale is low and getting lower.
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Frank, inside perspective on the follies of unintended consequences in medical reform
- By JW on 02-25-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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Inferno
- A Doctor's Ebola Story
- By: Steven Hatch MD
- Narrated by: Steven Hatch MD
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Steven Hatch first came to Liberia in November 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians Dr. Hatch had mentored and served with were dead or barely clinging to life, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Hundreds of victims perished each week; whole families were destroyed in a matter of days; so many died so quickly that the culturally taboo practice of cremation had to be instituted to dispose of the bodies.
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Good story, spoiled by politics.
- By Roman Vogel on 07-22-17
By: Steven Hatch MD
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The Good Death
- An Exploration of Dying in America
- By: Ann Neumann
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying.
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Ugh, so boring
- By Maranto on 05-13-19
By: Ann Neumann
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The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World's Deadliest Influenza Outbreak
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, the world was still in the throes of the Great War, the deadliest conflict in human history at that point, but while World War I would be a catastrophic war surpassed only by World War II, an unprecedented influenza outbreak that same year inflicted casualties that would make both wars pale in comparison.
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Complacency can kill
- By MolllyT on 12-10-16
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Falling into the Fire
- A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
- By: Christine Montross
- Narrated by: Christine Montross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Falling into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross's thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind.
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Buy this book! and READ it
- By joyce on 08-15-13
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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Confessions of a GP
- By: Benjamin Daniels
- Narrated by: Eamonn Riley
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Benjamin Daniels is angry. He is frustrated, confused, baffled and, quite frequently, very funny. He is also a GP. These are his confessions.A woman troubled by pornographic dreams about Tom Jones. An 80-year-old man who can't remember why he's come to see the doctor.
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Very enjoyable
- By PCF on 05-27-17
By: Benjamin Daniels
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The Family Gene
- A Mission to Turn My Deadly Inheritance into a Hopeful Future
- By: Joselin Linder
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Joselin Linder was in her 20s, her legs started to swell. She thought little of it until her health problems started to compound in ways that baffled her doctors. Diagnosed with extreme liver blockage and dangerous levels of lymph fluid, Joselin turned to the most similar case she could think of - her father's.
By: Joselin Linder
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By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously?
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Reading IS fun!
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After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General, the hospital’s chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? That year turned into O’Connell’s life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they work with thousands of homeless patients, some of whom we meet in this illuminating book.
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A wonderful program trying to help the most vulnerable in our city
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Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)
- A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying
- By: Sallie Tisdale
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
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Overall
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Performance
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You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.
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I thought I had more time...
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Health Disparities in the United States (Third Edition)
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The health-care system in the United States has been called the best in the world. Yet wide disparities persist between social groups, and many Americans suffer from poorer health than people in other developed countries. In this revised edition of Health Disparities in the United States, Donald A. Barr provides extensive new data about the ways low socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity interact to create and perpetuate these health disparities.
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Great Book
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What listeners say about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
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- Jen
- 01-27-16
Reader needs an audio dictionary
Fascinating story with broad applications for individuals employed in healthcare, social work, and various other fields in which one may encounter refugees and/or first-generation immigrants.
The reader, however, makes listening almost intolerable. She got two stars because she enunciates well and I assume say the Hmong words correctly. Unfortunately that's all the good I can say. She pauses awkwardly between words, seeming to misunderstand the grammar and thereby confusing content. I understand that many people struggle with medical terminology, but if you're going to narrate a book with one of the major elements being a young girl and her family's struggles in the healthcare system then perhaps you should figure it out. Additionally it's not just medical terms but words that I think most people, at least college-level educated, can pronounce.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Frankie Nordskov
- 02-08-19
Great book marred by amateur narrator
The book is a classic, no question. But as others have said, the narrator isn't at the professional level yet. She turns in a fine effort but her frequent mispronunciations add up to a big distraction from such a great book. It's a shame the producers didn't hire a more experienced narrator, or devote the effort to punching in corrections of English mispronunciations, as they obviously did take the effort to punch in what I assume are correctly and carefully pronounced Hmong and Lao words.
Some notable clunkers by the narrator:
"Indignant" for "Indigent"
"Amino" for "Amnio"
"ReFUSE" for "REFuse" (garbage)
"E-GREG-rious" for "Egregious"
"Injured" for "Inured"
And almost without fail throughout, double "S"s for plural possessives, as in:
Doctorses (for Doctors')
Cowses (for Cows')
Patientses (for Patients')
Similarly: Parentses, Ownerses, Soldierses, Communistses, and on and on like that. It's really bad, folks.
Despite all this, it's still quite listenable, and worth the effort to stay focused on the amazing text, but this book deserves far better narration than it got.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Jacelyn
- 04-26-16
Read!
It's a great book, if youre going into the medical field I suggest reading this!
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- coco et jabba
- 02-15-20
Incredible
This was a required reading for my medical anthropology class and I had no concept of its contents initially.
After reading it, I have a passion to further educate myself not only on the Hmong but also other cultures.
This was an amazing read and I am better for it.
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- Sara
- 02-28-19
A good read for health care workers
This book was an interesting perspective on how western health care interacts with minorities and how by changing perspectives, we can improve relations in our communities.
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- BAC
- 02-16-19
Amazing Book
I read a lot of ppl’s comments complaining about the readers mispronunciations and I’d just like to say she was chosen to read the book not b/c of her perfect English but b/c of her Hmong. You know the people who the book was written about. Personally as a Hmong growing up in America and speaking English well I tend to have an “accent” on various words such as school and bowl. Not to mention the Hmong and other Asian languages do not require pronunciation of words b/c afflictions are used on the same word to mean different things depending on the context. So when switching between languages it takes a conscious effort to try to change an unconscious action such as speaking.
Ironic that a book about cultural miscommunication and its consequences still have close minded comments being made about the Hmong reader... That being said.
The book did an amazing job of telling who the Hmong people are and it included many aspects of the culture which I appreciated as an “Americanize” Hmong since I grew up torn between the two cultures. This book made me appreciate the collective culture I grew up in. I am now able to understand my parents a little better too. My father was a Hmong officer who was captured and sent to seminary camp after the war, but was released when he fell ill after five years. He made it to Thailand where he met and married my mom and they were able to be sponsor by my uncle (dad’s big brother) to get them to America. It’s sad to hear how racist America still is when people like the Hmong also fought and died for it even before we’ve ever lived here. I’ve recently lost my father which makes me have to agree with Anne Fadiman that the American culture is abundant in wealth and opportunities but dry in love.
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- Joanie Gallagher
- 05-14-21
What a ride!
I came to this book after hearing a recommendation on a podcast.
I started it and could not put it down. I went back and forth emotionally, feeling for both the Lees and the doctors who cared for her at Merced Hospital.
I learned a ton about the Hmong and my major take-away was the cultural void that exists in the practice of American medicine when encountered other than our Western practice.
I enjoyed the journey and highly recommend.
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- Ashley King
- 01-28-19
I felt all the feelings
Loved it! An amazing book about the strength of communication. Thank you for the fifteenth anniversary edition. Simply beautiful
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- bgb121314
- 07-24-16
wordy but good
very wordy but a good book. Great for beginning Medical or ppl going it a job with other people.
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- jessica o'brien
- 07-07-17
Surprisingly amazing
I had to read (or listen to) this book for a sociology class. I wasn't prepared for how much striking information I would take in. Fadiman takes such care in detail, explaining a plethora of intricacies about Hmong culture. The is compelling and pulls at your heartstrings. I truly enjoyed it and it did evoke emotion. I also loved the narrator, which I know helped my experience.
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