Friday Meme #60

Posted November 3, 2017 by Whitney in Friday Memes / 9 Comments

Hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addict
 

Question:

When reading a book, do you use a bookmark to mark your place in the book, or do you just fold over the top corner of the page?

Answer

I always use a bookmark. It is sinful to dog-ear a book

book beginnings

Hosted by Rose City Reader

 

Beginning:

If Lia Lee had been born in the highlands of Northwest Laos, where her parents and twelve brothers and sisters were born, her mother would have squatted on the floor of the house her father had built from ax-hewn planks thatched with bamboo and grass.

Friday 56

Hosted by Freda’s Voice

 

Page 56

When Lia was two, a consulting neurologist recommended that she be started on Tegretol, continued on Dilantin, and gradually weaned off Phenobarbital because it was contributing to, or even entirely causing, her hyperactivity.  Unfortunately, the Lees had now decided that they liked Phenobarbital, disliked Dilantin, and were ambivalent about Tegretol.

 

My Thoughts

As November is Epilepsy Awareness month I felt The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down would be a perfect fit for this week’s Friday Meme. The beginning leads me to think that the novel will be very descriptive of the family’s lifestyle and beliefs which I think will be very important to the novel. Thus I find the book to have a promising beginning. As for page 56, I can understand the confusion caused by medical ailments, particularly when it is your child, as my parents have gone through this. This part in the novel was heartbreaking to read.

The Book

Friday Meme #60The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
Pages: 341
Publication Date September 28th 1998
Source: Bought
Goodreads

Lia Lee was born in 1981 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."


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9 responses to “Friday Meme #60

  1. I am a sinner. The most wicked of sinners… At least when it comes to books! Thankfully – for those who get twitchy about pristine paperbacks – I typically read on my kindle 🙂

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