The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman

Fascinating. I would recommend this book highly to anyone. However, it bothered me throughout that Fadiman didn’t explain what she was doing or why; she simply provided a description of what appeared to be an investigation of some kind. This was especially odd since she offered extraneous personal details of other kinds to animate her scenes. But she never said to the reader or the interviewees: “I’m trying to find out more about Hmong culture” or “I’m a professor of medicine investigating what went wrong at this hospital” or “I’m a human rights lawyer following up on a complaint,” etc., all of which she could have been doing.

-- Hmong embroidery (from a private collection)