FSG classics

"In telling the story of a young outsider who is obsessed with her gang-leader lover, McKay, but unwilling to commit to becoming one of 'the Property of the Orphans' -- the tough girls who belong to the boys on the avenue -- Hoffman explores hard truths about how difficult it is to love another, and yet how much more difficult it is to pull away."--P. of cover.

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.

Es ist die Geschichte des Monteurs und ehemaligen Fussballers Josef Bloch, der an einem Freitagmorgen seinen Job kündigt, weil er sich gefeuert fühlt, da beim Betreten der Bauhütte nur der Vorarbeiter aufblickte. Das Wochenende irrt er ziellos durch Wien und lernt die Kinokassiererin Gerda kennen, die er nach der ersten gemeinsamen Nacht erwürgt. Anschließend fährt Bloch mit dem Bus in eine Grenzstadt, wo er eine Bekannte besucht. Hier irrt er ruhelos durch die Gegend und bemerkt irgendwie gleichgültig, dass die Polizei seine Spur verfolgt.

1 volume ; 20 cm