book recommendation

I've been reading a lot this summer (for fun, for the first time in a long time, and I've greatly missed it). I just read Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and enjoyed it so much that I just had to come here and tell you all about it. (ps I almost just wrote "tell yall all about it... I'm so Southern now.. crazy!!)

The book is a true account of a disastrous encounter between a Hmong family and the medical community. Lia, the youngest child of Foua and Nao Kao Lee, suffers from a really bad case of epileptic seizures, a condition that could leave her brain dead if she doesn't take medication. Yet her parents subscribe to traditional Hmong beliefs that seizures stem from spiritual causes, and rejoice that they will allow Lia to grow up to become a shaman, since she is patently intimate with the spirits.

Fadiman describes the history and origins of the Hmong people in Laos, then Thailand, and then of their diaspora around the world in great detail, and does such an excellent job of understanding their beliefs, culture and moral ethics. She does fall prey to romanticizing them a bit, as I couldn't find one instance of criticism in the entire narrative, but that didn't seem unpardonable to me. As an aspiring physician, some of their troubles with western medicine frustrated me beyond belief; yet I still finished the book with a much greater appreciation for the Hmong culture.

I leave for Boston next week and am thoroughly freaked! Wish me luck!