The pace of this memoir is at times a bit too slow for me, which was magnified as I listened to the audio. She sometimes gives too much information about consecutive days while also covering her entire life and the life of her family before she was born. There is also a level of what some have called sentimentality, especially when it comes to her grandmother, that I tried to understand from her perspective but at times felt like a bit much. Still, it is an inside view of the refugee experience that is well worth the read.
This is the 10th memoir I've read during Nonfiction November....more
What an incredible read! A clash of Western medicine with Hmong culture, exasperated by a lack of translators, cultural understanding, and education oWhat an incredible read! A clash of Western medicine with Hmong culture, exasperated by a lack of translators, cultural understanding, and education on both sides. Anne Fadiman shows how the situation involving one very sick child went wrong and makes suggestions as to more effective ways to communicate and provide care. I really enjoyed learning about the Hmong family in particular, and their own methods of parenting and treating the sick. The author suggests that millenia of Hmong people refusing to be assimilated effects the challenges facing Hmong refugees in their new environments, so she covers quite a bit of Hmong history, particularly in Laos, and how that intersects with American history thanks to "The Secret War." This is going to be a great book club discussion!
The edition I read had a new afterword by the author providing some updates and discussion of the impact of the book. She also talks about how it would have been impossible to write now, at least not in the same way....more
Dr. Siri is 72 years old, but as a person under a new Communist regime who still has skills to offer, the government is not going to let him become a person of leisure. After a career as a surgeon, he is tasked with being the official state coroner, and has to teach himself with outdated texts. His supplies and research options are also quite limited.
Then bodies start appearing out of nowhere and Dr. Siri also becomes a bit of an investigator.
I enjoyed the very specific placeness of this book and will probably read another (I've heard the audio is very good but I read the print.) I think the facts of the regime change and the mixing cultures (Laotian, Vietnamese, Hmong, etc.), along with the conflict between religion and political doctrine - makes for an extra set of challenges for the characters to navigate as they try to solve the murders. I also like that Dr. Siri is not immune to love, although he is still grieving the death of his wife....more
Jenny (Reading Envy)
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