In 1980, a Hmong family relocated from Laos to Merced, California, a city about two and a half hours southeast of San Francisco. The youngest child, Lia, began having seizures when she was three months old and was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy. Over a period of several years, differing opinions about her condition and care resulted in repeated conflicts between her parents and the medical staff at the local hospital. In 1988, Anne Fadiman began to research the story and in 1997 published the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. The title of the book comes from the term used in the Hmong language to describe what was happening to Lia when she experienced a seizure.1
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