Where I Was From Book Cover

Where I Was From


A work of Non-fiction


Subgenres:

  • Memoir,
  • California,
  • Essays
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This book is for you if you're into...

  • California mythmaking dissected with memoir, history, and sharp critique
  • Deep dives into the contradictions of self-reliance and state power
  • Personal essays that interrogate family legacy and regional identity
Publisher Description

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: In this "arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline," Didion—a native Californian—reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours.

Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to California's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality.

Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.

Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and this book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

More Joan Didion

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