First Year Common Read 2009

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: a Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

By: Anne Fadiman

Publisher: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

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About the Book:

Description | Editorial Reviews | Reading Guide

Book Reviews    |     About Anne Fadiman    |   Further Reading

BOOK REVIEWS

(Search for Fadiman and Spirit Catches You)

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ABOUT ANNE FADIMAN

Biography (from the publisher)

Contemporary Authors Online in Biography Resource Center: Anne Fadiman

Other Works by Anne Fadiman:

At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: PS3556 .A314 Z4 2007

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998.  Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number PN4874 .F33 1998

FURTHER READING

Hmong History and Culture | Hmong Immigration to the United States | Cross-Cultural Medical Practice | Epilepsy | Reference Works | Internet Resources| Helpful Subject Headings

Hmong History and Culture (the following books may also be available at your local public library)

Goudineau, Yves, ed. Laos and Ethnic Minority Cultures: Promoting Heritage. Paris: Unesco, 2003. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: GN635 .L28 L37 2003

Hamilton-Merritt, Jane. Tragic Mountains: the Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Lao, 1942-1992. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: DS555.45 .M5 H36 1993

Hmong Art: Tradition and Change. Sheboygan: John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 1986. Amherst, Smith, and UMass Libraries Call Number: NK608 .H55 H56 1986

Johnson, Charles, ed. Dab Neeg Hmoob / Myths, Legends, and Folk Tales fom the Hmong of Laos. St. Paul: Maalester College, 1985. UMass DuBois Library Call Number: GR308.5 .H67 D32 1985

Livo, Norma J. and Dia Cha,eds. Folk Stories of the Hmong: Peoples of Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1991. UMass DuBois Library Call Number: GR308.5 .H67 F65 1991

Quincy, Keith. Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: the Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos. Spokane: Eastern Washington Press, 2000. Amherst College Library Call Number: DS559.73 .L28 Q56 2000

Quincy, Keith. Hmong, History of a People. Cheney: Eastern Washington Press, 1995. Amherst College Library Call Number: DS555.45 .M5 Q56 1995

Symonds, Patricia V. Calling in the Soul: Gender and the Cycle of Life in a Hmong Village. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Numbr: DS570 .M5 S95 2004

Virgins, Orphans, Widows Bards: Songs of Hmong Women. Recorded by Amy Catlin. Van Nuys: Amy Catlin, 1987. Smith College Josten Library Call Number: Cassettetape ZF A-TH VI. CAT

Hmong Immigration to the United States

Chan, Sucheng. Hmong Means Free: Life in Laos and America. Asian American History and Culture Series; Variation: Asian American History and Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: DS558.8 .H56 1994

Duffy, John. Writing from These Roots: Literacy in Hmong-American Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Amherst, Smith, and UMass Libraries Call Number: LC3501 .H56 D83 2007

Faderman, Lillian. I Begin My life All Over: the Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience with Ghia Xiong. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: E 184.H55 F33 1998 / Electronic Version

Koltyk, Jo Ann. New Pioneers in the Heartland: Hmong Life in Wisconsin. The New Immigrants Series. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: F589 .W4 K65 1998

Moua, Mai Neng. Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2002. Smith and UMass Libraries Call Number: PS508 .H63 B36 2002

Walker-Moffat, Wendy. The Other Side of the Asian American Success Story. The Jossey-Bass Education Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: LC3501 .H56 W35 1995

Tal, Kalí. Southeast Asian-American Communities. Vietnam Generation; vol. 2,no. 3. Silver Spring: Vietnam Generation, 1990. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: E184 .O6 S67 1990

Yang, Kao Kalia. The Latehomecomer: a Hmong Family Memoir. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2008. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: E 184.H55 Y36 2008

Cross-Cultural Medical Practice

Callahan, D. What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: RA 445 .C33 1990

Cha, Dia. Hmong American Concepts of Health, Healing, and Conventional Medicine. Asian Americans. New York: Routledge 2003. Smith College and UMass DuBois Libraries Call Number: RA418.5.T73C48 2003

Chiu, Monica. "Medical, Racist, and Colonial Constructions of Power: Creating the Asian American Patient and the Cultural Citizen in Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." Hmong Studies Journal, 5 (2004): 1-36.

Culhane-Pera, Kathleen A., et al., eds. Healing by Heart: Clinical and Ethical Case Stories of Hmong Families and Western Providers. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: RA 448.5 .A83 H43 2003

Galarneau, Charlene A. "Health Care as a Community Good: Many Dimensions, Many Communities, Many Views of Justice." The Hastings Center Report 32.5 (2002): 33-40.

Ng, Franklin. Adaptation, Acculturation, and Transnational Ties among Asian Americans. Asians in America, vol. 4. New York :Garland Publisher, 1998. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: E184 .O6 A33 1998

Numbers, R.L. and D.W. Amundsen, eds. Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: BL65 .M4 C37 1986

O'Connor, Bonnie Blair. Healing Traditions: Alternative Medicine and the Health Professions. Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number:R733 .O36 1995

The Split Horn: the Life of a Hmong Shaman in America. Dir. Taggart Siegel, Jim McSilver, Chai Thao. Videocasette. Alchemy Films, Independent Television Service and National Asian American Telecommunications Association, 2001. Mount Holyoke College LibraryMedia Video/DVD BL2370 .S5 S63 2001

Sullivan, L.E., ed. Healing and Restoring: Health and Medicine in the World's Religious Traditions. New York: Macmillan, 1989. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: BL65 .M4 H43 1989

Warner, Miriam and Marilyn Mochel. "The Hmong and Health Care in Merced County, California." Hmong Studies Journal. 2.2 (1998): 1-30.

Epilepsy

Atlas: Epilepsy Care in the World. Geneva: Programme for Neurological Diseases and Neuroscience, Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, World Health Organization, 2005.  UMass DuBois Library Call Number: RC372 .A86 2005

Browne, Thomas R. and Gregory L. Holmes.  Handbook of Epilepsy.  Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2008.  UMass DuBois Library Call Number: RC372 .B6 2008

Schachter, Steven C. and Lisa Francesca Andermann, eds.  Epilepsy in Our World: Stories of Living with Seizures from Around the World.  Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2008.  Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: RC372.3 .B735 2007

Temkin, Owsei.  The Falling Sickness: a History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology.  Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1971.  Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: RC372 .T45 1971

Reference Works

BAS Online / Bibliography of Asian Studies: Books, periodical articles and book chapters on all subjects pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide.

Dictionary of the Modern Politics of South-east Asia, 3rd ed. Edited by Michael Liefer. New York: Routledge,1995. Mount Holyoke College Library Reference Call Number: DS 526.7 L45 2001 Ref.

Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. Edited by Stanley Kutler. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996. Mount Holyoke College Library Reference Call Number: DS 557.7 .E53 1996 Ref.

Gall, SusanB. and Irene Natividad. The Asian-Amerian Almanac: A Reference Work on Asians in the United States. Detroit, Mich: Gale Research, 1995. Mount Holyoke College Library Reference Call Number: E184 .O6 A824 1995

Greaves, Thomas C. Endangered Peoples of North America: Struggles to Survive and Thrive. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: E98 .E85 E53 2002

Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America Contains 8,000 to 12,000 essays on specific culture groups in the United States, emphasizing religions, holidays, customs, and languages in addition to providing information on historical background and settlement patterns.

Historical Dictionary of Laos. 2nd ed. Edited by Martin Stuart-Fox. Lanham: Scarecrow Press,2001. Mount Holyoke College Library Call Number: DS555.5 .S78 2001

Medline: from the National Library of Medicine, an index of the world's biomedical literature.

Medline Plus: from the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, a database of consumer health infomation.

Pfeifer, Mark Edward. Hmong-Related Works, 1996-2006: an Annotated Bibliography. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007. Smith College Neilson Library Reference Call Number: DS509.5 .H66 P44 2007

Internet Resources

Hmong Studies Journal

Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center

Hmong Resource Center Library, Hmong Cultural Center, St. Paul, Minnesota (links to up-to-date bibliographies)

Portraits of Hmong Women: Photodocumentary with Essays, created by Kou Vang

Helpful Subject Headings

Try searching the library catalog on the following Library of Congress Subject Headings:

Epilepsy

Hmong Americans

Hmong Americans - Ethnic identity

Hmong Americans - Cultural assimilation

Hmong Americans - Medical care - case studies

Hmong (Asian people)

Hmong (Asian people) - History

Hmong (Asian people) - Laos

Hmong (Asian people) - United States

Refugees - Laos

Vietnam War, 1961-1975 - Refugees