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The Hmong believe that until a baby has been fully part of a “soul-calling” ceremony, he or she is not fully part of the human race. Some western religions believe that infants must be baptized and named to be ready for Heaven.
Credit Christopher Michel, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman
For me, the “nut” of Anne Fadiman’s story of Lia Lee, a child she met only after Lia was in a persistent vegetative state, the “nut” is the community of which Lia is a part, though she is not conscious of any of them.