Where I Was From (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Joan Didion
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Current affairs, history, and memoir
- Time of Work: 2003 and California’s pioneer history
- Setting: California
- Principal Characters: Leland Stanford, Jack London, Thomas Kinkade
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Current affairs, History
- Subjects: Traveling or travelers, Mythology or myths, Twenty-first century, Dreams, American Dream, California, West, U.S., Land settlement
- Locales: California
Like much of Joan Didion’s best work, Where I Was From performs a precarious balancing act: It manages to be simultaneously deeply intimate and broadly political. The book is both a personal memoir and an exploration of the big issues that define the author’s home turf, the state of California. The opening paragraphs contain a capsule history of the eventful westward journey of Didion’s pioneer family, focusing particularly on the women in the family and tracing back six generations the pedigree of her famous migraines. She tells the charmingly absurd tale of how her cousin...
[The entire page is 1824 words long]
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