A memoir about land, family, and perseverance from one of America's most influential writers.
In this poignant and unexpected book, Joan Didion revisits parts of her life, work, and history – as well as America's. Where I Was From, in Didion's words, "represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way I grew up, misinterpretations and misconceptions that are so much part of who I became that I can still only address them indirectly today."
The book is a haunting narrative of how her own family moved west with the exploration, from the birth of her great-great-great-great-grandmother in Virginia in 1766 to the death of her mother on the edge of the Pacific in 2001. It describes how the stories of harshness, abandonment, and endurance that accompanied the caravans created a culture in which survival seemed the only virtue. Didion examines how the folly and recklessness at the very essence of the California condition led to the California we know today – a state mortgaged first to the railroads, then to the aerospace industry, and, crucially, to the federal government.
Didion's unmistakable sense of America and its spirit, her acute interpretation of its institutions and literature, as well as her penetrating questioning of the stories America tells itself make this fiercely intelligent book a challenging and important travel experience from one of America's greatest writers.
Pages: 240, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm
