This description of this book on Amazon is “an account of the unbridgeable gulf between a family of Hmong refugees and their American doctors.” It is that! And it is also more than that. Heart-wrenching and illuminating, it’s also about culture and love and pride and science and humanity.
Lia Lee, a Hmong child whose family moved to California, suffered from epilepsy. Her first seizure was when she was only months old. When her parents took her to the hospital, there was a total language barrier, which led to a misdiagnosis. The next time, the doctors saw the seizure, diagnosed, and prescribed, as Western doctors do. But their treatment plan wasn’t followed due to a plethora of cultural differences and misunderstandings, from the macro (how epilepsy was viewed positively in the Hmong community), to the micro (Lia’s parents’ total inability to read the directions on the bottles of medications.) This went on for years as Lia’s parents sought to treat their daughter with both traditional Hmong rituals as well as with Western Medical options in Merced, California.
At every turn, Fadiman shows the empathy and humanity of each of the characters and their love, heartbreak, and difficult decisions. She includes sections about the harrowing history of the Hmong in general, as well as the journey of the Lees, humanizing both this family and the entire Hmong community. At times I found myself angry with the Western doctors for their obvious blindness to the situation; on the next page I’d be chastised with Fadiman’s evidence that the doctors truly were doing their absolute best. At times I found myself bewildered by the Hmong attitude in general, and then I’d be confronted with Lia’s parents’ deep, true love for their family.
Although written many years ago, this book is timeless in the way it sheds light on so many human blind spots: the fundamental differences in assumptions between cultures, our different ways of communicating, the foundations of our understandings of how our bodies and spirits work. It is a work of art and of empathy, and of all the books I’ve read this year it’s the one I think I can wholeheartedly recommend to just about anyone. It touches on so many deeply human topics, in such an empathetic way – it would be a GREAT book club book.
It’s a masterpiece.