California Poly Books

This book is an excellent choice for children. The author writes in a very straight-forward way. Death is not something that should be a secret. Children need to understand, or at least be exposed, to this concept. Younger children (below age 5) may not grasp the full picture. However, I would recommend this book to any parent or teacher who is trying to broaden their libraries. It is a must have!

Sensitively written by Donna Jo Napoli, Flamingo Dreams is a color picturebook about a very serious theme -- coping with grief. Told from the point of view of a child losing a father to a slow bout with cancer, Flamingo Dreams is about accepting coming death, coping, and finding joy in life. With a marked art style by Cathie Felstead that is very similar to how young children themselves draw with crayons, Flamingo Dreams is a touching and heartfelt book highly recommended to help young people through great loss.

I'd definitely recommend these books to anyone who's serious about picking the right college. Each section has pages of quotes from students they surveyed on things like on/off-campus dining, local atmosphere, nightlife (even drug scene - ha!). I was looking at a lot of schools spread out all over the country, and I couldn't possibly afford to visit every one of them in person, so this was a big help.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was the author of this book, so you may want to take my review as a little biased. :) What I can tell you is that I spent a summer working long and hard on this project, not to mention approaching tons of complete strangers to ask their opinions on everything from athletics to academics to dating to drugs. Not only that, but I myself was a student at Cal Poly for four years (2001-2004), so I know what it's like. If you're considering Cal Poly (which, in my opinion, is a fantastic place to live and go to school), this book probably comes closer than anything out there to giving you an idea of what college life in San Luis Obispo is like. There are pros and there are cons-- but if you're thinking about coming here, be informed! There was nothing like College Prowler when I was looking at colleges, so all I can say is that I got really lucky. But I wouldn't trust my next four years to the roll of a die if I had any other option. And now, you DO!

As the title implies, this book offers an alternative perspective of epilepsy, or seizures, as seen through the lens of the Hmong people. It also provides a fresh view of Western so-called civilization itself, and most particularly Western medicine.

I doubt there's any American today who doesn't harbor at least some ambivalence about how medicine's practiced in the United States, and I'm not just talking bills and insurance. Foua and Nao Kao Lee didn't trust the doctors who tended to their baby daughter Lia when she began to have seizures; they worried about doing damage to their baby's soul. In the Hmong culture, sickness is a signal of disturbance to the soul, and healing is a matter of tending to that soul. When did you last see an American doctor do that?

Even had the doctors who cared for Lia known of this tenet of the Lees' belief system, they probably wouldn't have given it consideration. As things were, they knew little about their patient's family: not only did the Lees not understand English, but the Hmong culture is so far from that of anything remotely American, the doctors hadn't the ears to hear, eyes to see, or consciousness to absorb any of it. To them, as to many Americans, the Hmong are a "Stone Age" people, ignorant and superstitious.

Certainly Hmong rituals and healing ceremonies are strange and arcane--but no stranger than those of the Catholic or Jewish faith: all utilize symbols, whether it's wine standing in for the blood of Jesus, drops of wine spilled onto a plate for Egyptian plagues, or a wooden bench transformed into a winged horse carrying a healer in search of a sick person's soul. Why is it that the good citizens of the United States laugh only at the latter?

Writer Anne Fadiman decided to look at American medicine through the prism of Lia Lee's sad story. She discovered, and conveyed to readers, the richness of Hmong culture, devoid of sentimentality. Fadiman is careful not to imbue the Hmong with the kind of romanticism that European Americans tend to hold about Native Americans: she does not evade the fact that they can be extremely difficult. By allowing them full humanity, she brings them vividly to life the same way a novelist does her characters--though non-fiction, thi book is as compelling as a great novel.

The Hmong came to America in the 1980s courtesy of war in Southeast Asia. They'd been living in the mountains of Laos, to which they'd migrated from China. The Hmong never assimilate into the culture of the country they inhabit, and have suffered persecution for centuries. Much like the Roma or the Jews, they're a migratory tribe without a homeland--but I doubt they ever felt quite as displaced as they did when they got to the United States. Because they helped the CIA in Laos, the Hmong were promised they'd be welcome in the U.S.--but when the troops left, they jetted only generals and hotshots out of the country, leaving the rest of the populace to fend for themselves. With the Laotian army hunting them down as enemies of the state, Hmong families set off on foot, carrying whatever they could manage. Many, particularly the old and the young, died along the way. Most possessions were shed, too heavy to carry, on the days-long journey. When they arrived in Thailand they were placed in refugee camps, where they waited to be rescued by the Americans. Those who were finally brought to America were `resettled' all over the map, without regard for family cohesion or transferability of survival skills: in Detroit, Minneapolis, Utah, Vermont--the Hmong were distributed all over the country so as to not unduly `burden' any one locality.

The Hmong tend to have large broods of 12 or 13 children, who they deeply adore, and they view disability as a consequence of some parental transgression, for which they atone by treating children with disabilities extra lovingly. They're used to living near relatives, who they see frequently, if not daily. The diaspora of the Hmong represented unspeakable hardship--which they resolved with what they call their `second resettlement.'One family would pack up a hastily purchased jalopy and drive off, looking for a spit of land hospitable to growing vegetables and the herbs necessary for healing rituals. They'd end up where all pioneers do, in California, and send news to relatives in Detroit or Chicago or Billings, Montana. Eventually, pockets of Hmong were clustered in a few locations around the country. Of these, Merced, California, where the Lee family settled, is one of the largest.

About one in every six residents of Merced, formerly an all-white rural area, is now Hmong. Here their culture and community thrived, parallel to the dominant culture, assimilating as little as possible. One way they did have to assimilate is medically: since 80% receive some form of government assistance, social services closely monitor them. American social workers do not have a high level of tolerance for cultural difference, and many Hmong practices, like gardening on the living room floor, or animal sacrifice, put parents in danger of losing their children to foster care--an unthinkable consequence that did occur, for a period of time, to Lia Lee.

The Hmong had heard about Western medicine even before arriving on these shores. They approved of antibiotics--swallow a pill and get well in a week--but not of much else. Surgery was anathema, since cutting the flesh or removing organs risks the flight of the soul. When their daughter Lia fell into the hands of the medical establishment, the Lees suffered deep agony over every procedure, from IV insertion to spinal taps.

Fadiman explores the interactions between the Lees and their daughter's medical caretakers in exhaustive detail. Whenever Lia suffers a setback, the Lees blame the doctors and their methods. The doctors accuse the Lees of "noncompliance" when they fail to properly dose Lia with three different kinds of anti-convulsants at the various times of day prescribed, not realizing that the Hmong don't even use clocks. Fadiman presents a balanced picture, blaming neither the family nor the hospital, but cultural barriers, for what goes wrong--and eventually things do go terribly wrong. By the age of four Lia is brain dead. The hospital hooks her up to feeding tubes, expecting her to die within days, but the Lees insist on taking her home, where they disconnect every tube and treat Lia as a favored family member. They take turns carrying her around on their backs; like a mama bird, Foua pre-chews her daughter's food and feeds it to her orally; they sacrifice pigs in healing ceremonies; and Lia sleeps with her parents every night. To the astonishment of the medical community, Lia does not die, and by the end of the book, years after being declared brain dead, she's still alive. As I write this, Lia Lee is still alive and lovingly cared for by her mother and siblings. Her medical condition has not changed. Her father, Nao Kao Lee, died in January of 2003.

This book enriched, and possibly changed, my life. I can't recommend it too highly.

A fascinating case study of a Hmong family's profoundly frustrating encounter with a county medical center in rural California. The book is very well written, and gave me fresh insight into what it really means for us to be a "nation of immigrants." My only frustration was with the organization of the book. As it jumped backed and forth between the micro and the macro, and between the recent and more distant past, the narrative lost some of its momentum. But that said, it is one of those rare books that has made me look at the world in a new way, and for that reason, I highly recommend it.

This was an outstanding book. You may need to be a social anthropologist at heart to really love it, but the book was so enlightening on so many different levels. The background and customs of the Hmong are fascinating, and their clash with western culture is eye opening. I learned so much, not just about the Hmong, but about my own beliefs.

If anyone's been patient enough to read all hundred-plus reviews up to this point, they already know what this book is about, how well-written it was, how well researched, and how terribly humane.

All I can add is that, though I read (well, start, at any rate) about a hundred books a year, and have been doing so for about three decades now, this is the single best book I've ever read.

During my senior year of college, I took a "Holistic Living" course and this was one of the books we were required to read. As I've mentioned in other reviews, I don't normally gravitate towards non-fiction, however, there are instances when I read a piece of non-fiction and find myself as captivated by the story as if it were a novel. "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" was one of these books.

In her book, Ms. Fadiman presents the story of a Hmong-American family who is forced to step outside their comfort zone to seek medical treatment for their infant daughter, Lia, an epileptic. Not only do Lia's parents have to overcome a language barrier, but they also hold views which differ greatly from those held by the Western-trained medical doctors treating Lia. What results, is an enormous culture clash between Lia's parents and her treating physicians. Sadly, the consequences of the mis-communication and cultural mis-understanding which take place between the Lees and Lia's doctors has a tragic and permanent effect on Lia's life.

Alongside the Lee's story, Ms. Fadiman presents an informative history of the Hmong people, while also addressing a number of important ethical considerations germane to the medical treatment of non-western patients.

I highly recommend this book to anyone in the medical profession or to anyone interested in learning about traditional Hmong culture.

I was hoping to find the different majors and programs that each of the schools have in this book, but was really disappointed. All it has is whether a school has good parking, good looking guys and girls or good food. The only interesting part is the community the school is located in. Otherwise it was a letdown.

While there were some simple errors and some confusing statements from the contributing students, this book was very well written and helpful overall. It gives you an inside look (mostly from students) into the college's Greek life, drug scene, campus and off-campus housing, among other things. If you're looking for a general overview of the many California colleges, this is a great book to accomplish that.

I have bought a lot of different books to help me to choose the right college for me. This book is so helpful, it has one of the main things I was looking for in a college guide: the most popular majors (which can tell you if the college specializes in the field you want to go into). It's very clear and tells you about almost everything you want to know from restaurants in the area to parking to housing to drug problems.

this book really helped me decide which school to go to, it tells you about the stuff you care about...social scene and atmosphere! definitely worth a read.

After reading this guidebook, I am definitely going to school in California. I'm from NY, and my parents want me to go to an Ivy League school ... either Cornell or Dartmouth, but I'm DYING to go to either USC, UCLA, Berkeley, or hopefully, Stanford.

After reading this guidebook though, I felt like I spent 4 years on each campus ... each school is covered in dept, around 40 different schools in Cali, and it's really easy to read. I get good grades, but I'm not much of a reader ... but the way this book is laid out is so incredibly easy to read, that anyone can breeze through the book and fall in love with any college in California.

Be warned though, they talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly in this guide.

For example, USC is not in the safest part of town ... but if you're from NY, like me, you'll be OK.

I'm more interested in what the student body is going to be like then some dumb US news ranking ... after all, I'm most likely going to meet my life long friends at college, including my wife! I don't want her to be some uptight Ivy nerd ... I want a nice cinnamoned tan californian!

Thanks to College Prowler's Calfornia Colleges, I have seen the light!