How long does it take to read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down?
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman takes about 6 hours 15 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 15 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1997. 341 pages, about 93,775 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 25 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 15 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 54 minutes |
The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
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. 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 the 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. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down moves from hospital corridors to healing ceremonies, and from the hill country of Laos to the living rooms of Merced, uncovering in its path the complex sources and implications of two dramatically clashing worldviews.
Subjects: Asian Americans, Attitude, Attitude of Health Personnel, Child, Communication, Complementary Therapies
