Event: Anne Fadiman, an award-winning author in residence at Yale University, will discuss the Hmong refugee community in California and its challenges with the U.S. medical system in a lecture hosted by the Plan II Honors Program and the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin.
When: Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The University of Texas at Austin, Utopia Theater in the School of Social Work building. A campus map is available online.
Background: The award-winning author will discuss the tragic case of one epileptic child who became a casualty of the cultural battle between her family and the American doctors who were treating her disease. Participants at the event will include people, many of them refugees themselves, who provide resettlement, health and mental services to refugee populations and victims of human trafficking.
Fadiman is the author of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, the Salon Book Award for nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for current interest nonfiction and the Boston Book Review Ann Rea Jewell Award for nonfiction.
Fadiman’s essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Washington Post. While she was a staff writer at Life, she won a National Magazine Award for Reporting for her reportage on suicide among the elderly.
Seating is limited. Tickets (free of charge) are available at the student services desk in the School of Social Work building or at the Joynes Reading Room front desk in the Carothers Building, room 007.
Media representatives interested in attending may contact Matt Valentine to be added to the guest list.
