When the UC Davis community book project was launched earlier this year, many faculty members knew they wanted to get themselves and their students involved.
But they also struggled to figure how they could incorporate Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down into their courses this fall. The book documents the struggle between doctors and members of an immigrant Hmong family over the most appropriate care - culturally and medically - for their young epileptic daughter.
"We were scratching our heads and saying 'I don't know how this is going to work,'" said history professor Joan Cadden, recalling a conversation with English professor Marijane Osborn about the book.
But during a roundtable discussion last Friday, many faculty members, including Cadden, revealed they've begun to come up with ideas - no matter their subject area.
About two dozen faculty members - representing disciplines from anatomy to history and communication - attended the discussion, along with several staff members.
Cadden, for example, will weave discussion of the book into a class on early European medicine. For the past 15 years she's taught the course, she's always opened with a discussion of the problems of contemporary Western medicine. This year she plans to use the Fadiman book, Cadden said.
Karen Shimakawa, an assistant professor of Asian American studies, said the way she incorporates The Spirit Catches You into her introductory Asian American studies class is not as important as the fact that students simply read and reflect on the book.
"If people across campus are reading it, I want my 200 people to be running around with a coherent, cogent response," she said.
While The Spirit Catches You might seem a natural for Shimakawa's class, even Kent Pinkerton, who teaches anatomy at the veterinary and medical schools, would like to include discussion of it in his vet course. He imagines it opening discussions of the veterinarian's role as an active, compassionate community member.
"If vet students are going to be working with (animal) owners from different cultures they need to understand where they are coming from," Pinkerton said after the meeting.
Some students may see discussing a book about human cultural understanding an odd choice for a veterinary class, but Pinkerton finds the book relevant. "Students could say 'Are you giving us lectures on anatomy or lectures on how we should be as individuals?'" he said. "To me, both are important to train effective physicians and veterinarians."
Participants discussed how they would respond to students who are reluctant to read the book. Some students she's talked to are concer-ned by the way that Fadiman, a caucasian journalist, portrays the Hmong culture as un-American, said Anita Poon, a student affairs officer for Asian Amer-ican studies. "It's that 'othering' that is going on in the book that many of them are frustrated by," she said.
But Rina Alcal-ay, an associate pro-fessor of communication who used the book in a past course, said her students realized that "no one in the book was black or white, right or wrong."
The students, including many Asian-Americans, used the book to discuss how communication techniques could be softened between two communities.
Campus-wide activities for the book project kick off Oct. 16, when the Women's Resources and Research Center hosts a talk by May Ying Ly, director of the Hmong Women's Heritage Association.
For a complete list of activities, go to http://occr.ucdavis.edu/bookproject.html.