The Book Makes You Fall Down

So, I pick up the book being promoted for this year's Global Outreach Conference, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Fortunately, I was sitting because I would have fallen down reading the first page. How's this for an opening sentence: "If Lia Lee had been born in the highlands of northwest Laos, where her parents and twelve of her brothers and sisters were born, her mother would have squatted on the floor of the house that her father had built from ax-hewn planks thatched with bamboo and grass."

Okay, I can handle this. I witnessed the birth of my two daughters. I read on.
"Even if Foua had been a less fastidious housekeeper, her newborn babies wouldn't have gotten dirty, since she never let them actually touch the [dirt] floor. She remains proud to this day that she delivered each of them into her own hands, reaching between her legs to ease out the head and then letting the rest of the body slip out onto her bent forearms."

"Oh my," as one of my daughters would say. Let me continue. "No birth attendant was present, though if her throat became dry during labor, her huband, Nao Kao, was permitted to bring her a cup of hot water, as long as he averted his eyes from her body. Because Foua believed that moaning and screaming would thwart the birth, she labored in silence, with the exception of an occasional prayer to her ancestors. She was so quiet that although most of her babies were born at night, her older children slept undisturbed on a communal bamboo pallet a few feet away, and woke only when they heard the cry of their new brother or sister."

My word! What is page 3 going to present?