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Where I Was From

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 1,286 ratings · 156 reviews

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’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 Wa...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published September 14th 2004 by Vintage (first published 2003)

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Sep 24, 2012 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: westward-ho

So, so good. Family memoir, social history, contemporary reportage and literary criticism (of Frank Norris, Jack London, and Joan Didion) in perfect proportions, synthesized in her sad and piquant prose, her "astringent lyricism." A patient autopsy of the myths of the American West, of Progress. I want to shelve this with the Bridge novels and Son of the Morning Star; Didion and Connell children of the Plains and the Far West, with their doubts and dry wits, sly siblings winking to each other ac...more

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Aug 23, 2007 Miss. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: politicshistory

Well, I only got half way through this one. The last chapter I landed on, about the Spur Posse and the stark reality of a pre-designed faux ownership class called Lakewood, seems to be the best chapter in the book. It was a struggle to get there.

I feel odd reviewing a book I only read half of, but take a jab at this if you need to. Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me Joan Didion didn't write a whole book about the underbelly of the California dream and leave out the injustices done to people of c...more Well, I only got half way through this one. The last chapter I landed on, about the Spur Posse and the stark reality of a pre-designed faux ownership class called Lakewood, seems to be the best chapter in the book. It was a struggle to get there.

I feel odd reviewing a book I only read half of, but take a jab at this if you need to. Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me Joan Didion didn't write a whole book about the underbelly of the California dream and leave out the injustices done to people of color. Tell me it ain't so. Because, as far as I can see, Joan, who is a CA native, wrote this "expose" on the great golden state, and seems to feign shock that the westward expansion was less than pleasant, that the water wars and the railway building did not benefit the masses in conception or manifestation. And mostly from the viewpoint of the privelaged.

Her book starts with a twisting and turning history of the Sacramento River, dives loosely into the trek from east to west, the railways, etc, etc. We have heard this story. Joan is correct in pointing out that this is usually a glamorized, romantic tale of rugged individualism. She is also correct in pointing out that CA is one of the more dependant states on federal funding in the nation, and has been from the start. She delivers this as if this contrast were some massive epiphany, as if she truly discovered this novel idea. Strcuk gold, if you will.

Some how, Didion misses the bulk of CA history. All her stories (or at least half of them) are told from the trite viewpoint of wealthy white men and women. Property owners. Barons. She misses the true injustices that have built CA into the amazing place it is today. I am not asking her to write the story of the Native American, I am not asking her to conjure images of every Chinese man's sweat and blood over the iron tracks they lay, or to pay book length homage to Hispanic families who are the backbone of the agricultural industry in CA- but a nod, a wave from your new Manhattan pedestal Joan! Something. I knew the minute she started this historical account without a mention of the people and land that came before the white "settlers" that we were in for a one way perspective ride.

Don't trash CA unless you trash it right. Otherwise, you won't see the people who overcame the struggles. That's why CA rocks it.
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Oct 15, 2011 Kim Fay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading this book was like being given half the pieces of a puzzle and trying to create the whole image from them. The result was far better than having been given all of the pieces, because I spent part of the time with this book in my hands, reading it, and other part with this book in my hands, thinking about what I was reading and making the connections, based on my own experiences and opinions. The book, essentially, is about place. Specifically: California, and the myth of idealism that cr...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Joy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was about the "confusions, misapprehensions and misunderstnadings" about California, where the author grew up. Her family moved from Virginia in 1766. Didion grew up hearing the wagon-train stories of hardship and abandonment and endurance. She thinks these stories, part of California folklore, created a culture in which survival would seem the sole virtue. She sees the pattern of "folly and recklessness" leading the state to mortgage itself first to the the railroad, then the aerospac...more This book was about the "confusions, misapprehensions and misunderstnadings" about California, where the author grew up. Her family moved from Virginia in 1766. Didion grew up hearing the wagon-train stories of hardship and abandonment and endurance. She thinks these stories, part of California folklore, created a culture in which survival would seem the sole virtue. She sees the pattern of "folly and recklessness" leading the state to mortgage itself first to the the railroad, then the aerospace industry, and then the federal government. An example of Californians selling themselves out to the highest bidder is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The state loves prisons. In 1994 standardized testing of reading skills of CA fourth graders placed them last in the nation, tied with LA. It was 1995 when, for the first time, CA spent more on its prisons than on its two university systems. The Univ. of CA has ten campuses and CA State Univ. has 24 campuses. Another interesting thing was mental institutions. In 1978, CA had a higher rate of commitment for insanity than any other state. A state mental hospital physician says it was not just the mentally ill, but "imbeciles, dotards, idiots, drunkards, simpletons, fools, the aged, the vagebond, and the helpless." Between 1906 and 1929, 59% of those committed to mental institutions were not because of violence or a threat to themselves or others, but because they exhibited "odd or peculiar behavior." An interesting quote from Didion was: "There was near Sacramento an asylum where I was periodically taken with my Girl Scout troop to exhibit for the inmates our determined cheerfulness while singing rounds, nine-year-olds with merit badges on our sleeves pressed into service as Musicians and Assistant Attendants." Now a description of Didion's mother: "She was passionately opinionated on a number of points that reflected, on examination, no belief she actually held." Her mother's most frequent line was: "What difference does it make?" Interesting book. I should have given it a four-star rating. I just changed it. Victor Davis Hanson: "Material bounty and freedom are so much stronger incentives than sacrifice and character."(less)

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Apr 18, 2010 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Where I Was From is Didion's winding, personal, and disillusioned exploration of the shifting meanings of myth and memory in California. As a fifth-generation Californian, Didion grew up on the idea of the Edenic California dream, only to wake up from it years later. Where I Was From is her attempt to find some sense in her past and the past of California. I would not classify this as a memoir--it is, in fact, only rarely personal on the level you generally expect from a memoir. It is instead an...more Where I Was From is Didion's winding, personal, and disillusioned exploration of the shifting meanings of myth and memory in California. As a fifth-generation Californian, Didion grew up on the idea of the Edenic California dream, only to wake up from it years later. Where I Was From is her attempt to find some sense in her past and the past of California. I would not classify this as a memoir--it is, in fact, only rarely personal on the level you generally expect from a memoir. It is instead an interesting blend of autobiography, family history, literary analysis, journalism, and history.

Frankly, a lot of people will hate this book. I read it in a writing class and only three of the eight of us liked it. But it worked for me on two levels.

First, Where I Was From is about a painful break with the past, and though it is ostensibly about Didion and California, its power lies in its transcending themes: ties to place, nostalgia, change, myth, and memory. The story of memory and change in California is repeated in thousands of communities--not the least of which is my hometown, the population of which has more than doubled during my lifetime. Didion's pangs of “birthright squandered, a paradise lost” resonated with me. I don't think very many Americans have the experience anymore of having deep family and personal ties to a place--we move around so much. But those who have, and have lived to see the place transformed, will understand what Didion was going through when she wrote this book.

Second, Didion gave me some good ideas about how to approach some of my own family history. She made me realize that sometimes it's not only about the truth of what happened, but the stories and the objects that get passed down to us. As a historian, I took this book as an excellent example of the way each individual person has a "sense of history" the way we have a "sense of place." Our views of the past are not composed of uniform facts assembled over the course of our public education, but are some combination of that, our own experience, family stories, and any number of other things. I think our pasts are more meaningful when not surgically separated from everything else.

As for why you might hate this book, it jumps back and forth in time at will. I pictured it kind of like an early twentieth century traveler's scrapbook, photographs and ephemera and narrative all arranged together to tell a story of a journey, but at the end of the day, a lot of people prefer a straightforward narrative. Also, there is a big chunk of the middle of the book all about the Spur Posse, which even I found a little tedious. (less)

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Apr 14, 2010 M. D. Hudson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Joan Didion strikes me as being one of the smartest writers in America, with a firm but quiet authority that makes me trust her absolutely. She is also probably the last social commentator in America who is not shouting with little rivulets of mad-dog spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.

Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center...more Joan Didion strikes me as being one of the smartest writers in America, with a firm but quiet authority that makes me trust her absolutely. She is also probably the last social commentator in America who is not shouting with little rivulets of mad-dog spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.

Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center of the military-trading frontier and characterized by all of the usual boondoggles, chicanery, and rapaciousness. To see this carried on to the Golden Gate was a bit depressing – in fact, by the time we had “expanded” to California, the federal apparatus had become very sophisticated and prevalent in a way that dwarfs the knee-britches and coonskin cap crudities of Indiana settlement. Damn the railroads. And aero-space. And, er, and thank God for them too, I guess. Whence goeth California, so goeth the country?

Ah, but I digress. One of my favorite moments in this book was when one of my favorite military historians, Victor Davis Hansen, a Californian like Didion, and like Didion the product of wealthy pioneer ranch-owning stock, came under Didion’s pitiless gaze. Hansen has long rhapsodized about how he still lives on and to some extent works the ranch, contrasting his rooted-to-the-soil rootedness with the shallow narcissistic lives lead by other Americans. Because of my enormous respect for him, I always took all these things he said as gospel. But Didion calmly and rationally takes Hansen’s supposed pioneering spirit and reduces it to a smoldering pile of historical wishful-thinking. California is and pretty much always has been a heavily subsidized, self-satisfied and self-delusional product of a whole bunch of Federal interference --dam-building and corporate gimmees (first the railroads, then military-avionics, crop subsidies, etc.). The Donner Party had to eat their dead (and not-quite-dead-yets) but once they got to the Golden State, things got a lot easier for many of them. This is a gross simplification of Didion’s calm handling of facts. I was uncomfortable to see Hansen get exposed like this…he rebutted, I presume, somewhere…but Didion did it without getting shrill for even a moment. And her logic, and her facts, seemed dead-on.

I mean to read more of Didion’s work…my only (wildly unfair) complaint about her is that she often writes about stuff I don’t give a tinker’s damn about (California, for instance – although she made me interested finally. But I had to stop reading her book on Miami, so absolutely bogged down and bored I became in the Cuban expat political scene). Sort of like the way the New Yorker’s best writer, Joan Accocela (I spelt that wrong, I know) covers, mostly, dance! But good writing is its own reward. Didion is a master. There is this weird melancholy aspect to her prose that is unique to her – it lends a gravity to what she writes that is missing in that of most other cultural commentators. She’s one of the few famous contemporary writers I would like to know.
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Nov 10, 2009 Adele rated it 2 of 5 stars

I love Joan Didion. Really, I do. She's kind of my idol. But most unfortunately, Where I Was From didn't really do it for me. I was expecting to love it: it's about California, gritty LA sprawl California with teenage gangs (actually, that part was good) growing up in Sacramento in the '40s and '50s, the decline of ranches and the rise of water wars, and the consequences of the arrival of the railroad. The railroad part is mostly what killed it for me, because she started talking about The Octop...more

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Oct 15, 2007 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

this is not a book i ever would have picked up on my own. i didn't think i cared about a personal history of california told by a wealthy white woman. i underestimated how a mind and a pen like joan didion's can shape a subject. navigating between irrigation, mythology, american dreaming, race riots, and the muted undercurrent of class, didion creates a poignant landscape that refuses to indulge mere sentiment. there are turns of phrase in here that took my breath away. quote(s) to come.

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Feb 17, 2012 Maggie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir, favorite-authors, non-fiction

Normally I love Joan Didion's books. With this book, though, Didion didn't seem to be able to make up her mind about where she wanted it to go or, perhaps, she allowed an editor to change it to make parts of it more exciting. Initially the book was about Didion's family coming to California and settling near Sacramento and how huge tracts of the land in Northern California were bought up by certain families, which over time changed hands and how it was used. Then the focus shifts to Orange Count...more

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May 01, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nobody writes better about California and what it means being a Californian then Joan Didion. In "Where I Was From" Didion looks at the state from a distance of time and geography as she breaks down California's essence. First there was the promise of the railroads and the rush of the '49ers exponentially increasing the state from a western dream into a disparate and unsustainable reality. After the railroads there's the promise of water and as before in previous essays Didion writes clearly abo...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-west, biographies-memoirs, favorites

This might just be my favorite Didion, as it’s at once a deeply personal memoir about growing-up in booming, post-war Northern California as well as an exacting examination of stark and precipitous change—and the promises, the devastation, and the hypocrisy that follow. As someone who grew up amidst acute change—in my case, it was the massive population explosion in the 80s and 90s along the Colorado Front Range—this book hits home, reminding me that I did understand more than I realized and tha...more

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May 04, 2009 Jan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: history buffs

Joan Didion's constant name-dropping is such a turn-off to me that I almost didn't finish this book--she reminds me of the "cool kids" at high school. One of the reasons I completely avoid my class reunions.

That said, I learned quite a bit of California history from this book that I'd not heard before (or perhaps slept through). We all know the stories about the pioneers who often had to bury their dead and jettison all personal effects on the trail, not to mention the ill-fated Donner Party. B...more

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Apr 20, 2011 Kkraemer rated it 3 of 5 stars

One of my goals is to write a single sentence as good as one of Joan Didion's, an ambition fueled, in part, by the fact that she grew up near Sacramento (as I did). This is a personal reflection of familiar things, a different perspective than my own.

I suspect that all places carry inherent contradictions: certainly California, with its successive waves of immigrants (both from other states and other countries), and its money-making potential (land, ports, intellect) has many. Didion comes from...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Mai rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, non-fiction, read-for-school, social-commentary, social-issues, own, 3point5-stars, ebook

Despite my average rating, I really wish I'd brought a hard copy of this book for college. I only brought the ebook edition because it was raining, I needed the book ASAP, and I have a nook. This is not a straightforward book. It's a book about California, our perceptions of the state and hence the perception we Californians have of ourselves. It's a book that wonders between topics, without clear ties or connections, much less clear statements, declarations, or answers about the nature of Calif...more

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Jul 16, 2011 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book suffered do to the circumstances in which I read it, a time of transition, hard to get a rhythm. Still, I didn't love this like I hoped. I thought it was solid, more of a 2.5, but lacked a lot of the power, craft, and voice of "Slouching." While she does investigate some of the history and myth-making of California, the most compelling parts of the book are personal, as at the end with her mother, and I wish it were the other way around. Still, as someone fascinated by his home, it was...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Herbie added it

Took me a while to see how all the history was going to fit together. My main criticism of this book upon first reaction is that Didion seems reluctant to admit that this examination is really a personal one. She seems to be hiding behind a stack of encyclopedias about California history. Her essential claim is a personal one: what I thought I knew about California turned out to be wrong. She describes a dynamic by which old Californians pass judgement on the new Californians for not holding up...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had low expectations going into this one, and figured I'd be especially disappointed by Didion's failure to engage me even when the subject matter was California. Boy, was I wrong. This was so much better than Salvador and Miami, and I can only assume it's because she knew and cared deeply about California in a way she didn't when it came to those other places.

The Lakewood stuff is really interesting, particularly as a dark counterpoint to D.J. Waldie's Holy Land, which I read several months a...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Heather Anderson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was born in California and lived there until I was 37 years old. We studied State History in grade school, the whole thing from the native tribes and the Spanish padres and settlers. Joan's book is unique in that here is are parts of California history that I am unfamiliar with. I particularly like the parts about the asylums. It's not all rosy happy sunshine. Her family's story is unique and it was refreshing to read a story from a completely different perspective from what I have known. I'm...more

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Apr 30, 2009 Inder rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Inder by: Elizabeth

Shelves: california, 20th-century, memoir, read-2009, personalessays, history, other-reading-2009

One of the most interesting things about the book is its unique form: alternating historical and personal essays centering around California and its history. I would not call it a "memoir" (though it is often billed as such). If you approach this expecting a cohesive story, you may be disappointed, but as a collection of essays, it is quite wonderful, full of interesting tidbits, literary references, and juicy history. Didion tries to grapple with some of the most basic tensions underlying Calif...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Caley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Didion is intimidating and her conclusions are sharp. So much is left unscathily unsaid between the lines. That said, this memoir suffers from an overdose of pretension (analysing your own work of fiction through your own revisionist history lens? uhm, no). There's also suprisingly no mention of alternative Californian voices throughout the entire memoir. I understand her focus was to narrow in on her own experience as a Californian native and the comforts of an upper class lifestyle, but her om...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Rita marked it as to-read

Seems Joan Didion is an author I might like to read.
"Best living essayist in America. ... her ability to see through the clouds of rhetorical nonsense and get to the point ... writes beautifully about what is ugly and truthfully about what is false" [NYR Nov 24, 2011, by Cathleen Schine on new book Blue Nights on daughter's life and death]

This book, memoir of her growing up in CALIF [Sacramento]

Also, an essay on Georgia O'Keefe 1976
Also "Goodbye to All That" -- ode to NYC
"Slouching towards Bethl...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Marilee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Didion explores what it means to be a Californian. She interrogates notions that she was raised to believe, narratives of adventure and discovery, distinctions between old California and new California. She dismantles origin stories and "realities" she was encouraged to accept as a child, while still living inside the contradictions they created within her. At times the book is dry, but it helped me get a sense of some of the contradictions I've been thinking over from my own upbringing. The boo...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Anne B rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was raised in California, still live here, and have read Didion all my life. I was thinking of her words on the Santa Ana winds when I finished this book, while a firebug in Los Angeles took advantage of the hot winter weather to set cars on fire across the Westside. Ain't no crazy like a California crazy, I thought; but Joan says it better.

We can divide Didion's work into phases: investigative, fictional, and her late work, mostly memoir. I reject the idea that her earlier stuff is somehow s...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Aneesa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't wonder how this book ever got published (in the mid-90s I was already close-reading passages by Didion about the Santa Ana winds for my SATs), but it is another example of the incredible things with which well-respected authors get away. It's not that it wasn't interesting--or even that I didn't like it--but it's just odd.

Didion has a peculiar writing style that I don't mind. Like her book The Year of Magical Thinking, which I loved and which made me tear up on public transportation mor...more I don't wonder how this book ever got published (in the mid-90s I was already close-reading passages by Didion about the Santa Ana winds for my SATs), but it is another example of the incredible things with which well-respected authors get away. It's not that it wasn't interesting--or even that I didn't like it--but it's just odd.

Didion has a peculiar writing style that I don't mind. Like her book The Year of Magical Thinking, which I loved and which made me tear up on public transportation more than once, the reader is repeatedly bombarded with only somewhat linear details which all start to add up and finally by the end of the book you feel some weight.

But I was still left with so many questions for her: What's the difference between the California dream and the American dream? And isn't it always, not just in California, what destroys us? How do you know how growing up in California has affected your sense of place without the experience of growing up elsewhere? Also, as Andrea noted, how can you write a book about California industry and agriculture without mentioning migrant farm workers? (Andrea's final assessment of California given the evidence in this book was spot-on: we are a state of booms and busts.)

It is not until page 174 that Didion addresses the fact that "discussion of how California has 'changed,' then, tends locally to define the more ideal California as that which existed at whatever past point the speaker first saw it"--even, as she says, if the speaker first saw California just six months ago--as though that is different than any place or time, and not completely relevant to her entire thesis (which is basically: how has Joan Didion, her family of long-time California residents, and everyone who has come to California [pre-1960s, a more recent wave of immigration that she unfortunately doesn't address:] been wrong/confused about California?).

Like I said below, if you're put off by the dry (ha) eighteenth and nineteenth century history of California that opens the the book, skip to Part Two, which is mostly about the contrived founding of Lakewood, CA and what that means for it. (My dad's from Lakewood, so I was particularly interested. Didion called the memoir my father gave me about it years ago, Holy Land by D.J. Waldie, "an extraordinary book," so maybe I will read it.) In Part Three of the book she weirdly examines and revises her own novel, Run River, as though someone else had written it.

In the end, though, I was completely turned off when (pages 219-220) Didion's California "began to seem remote," because of her realization that her daughter Quintana, having been adopted, has no connection to California. This couldn't be less true, considering that Quintana has been raised, partially in California, by Didion and her extended family, who have considered themselves Californians for generations. During the entire book you get the sense that Didion is bragging about her heritage and connections--despite her trying to push that accusation onto other characters--and here she proves to us that what she means by "Californian" has to do not with where you live, how that has affected you, what you believe about the place and yourself, but with how far back, genetically, you can claim that title. It's particularly nonsensical when you consider that much of the book is about how California was founded by people who left everything and everyone they knew behind and started a new life. My mother (who like Didion's mother hangs up the phone without saying goodbye) was part of that 1960s immigration, and in moving out here she, like so many others, cut off her ties to the rest of her family, leaving me to grow up just as much a Californian as Joan Didion--because neither of us had a world outside of it.(less)

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Nov 08, 2008 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: goin-back-to-cali, didion

I picked this one up after a close friend of mine had recently come in contact with someone who has spent significant time in California. This book is a collection of essays, uniquely Didion and therefore uniquely personal, about the history of California. In short, Didion says it best, “. . . this book represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, confusions as much about America as about California, misapprehensions and misunderstandings, so m...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Marcie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While I wouldn't say this is my favorite Joan Didion book I did enjoy it. She would probably be my desert island author if I had to choose one. I always love the way she intertwines her own life narrative into a larger (usually political) story. And since I too grew up in California, a generation after Didon(my parents driving their Ford station wagon west in 1984,) there is a connection to the story for me. In Third Grade I got caught up in the California Mythology. I wanted to be one of those...more

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Jan 27, 2008 John rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: postwar-literature, autobiography-and-memoirs

3/4 of this book is wonderful. Didion, one of my favorite writers, does a fantastic job of exploring the history of California and of her own family, whose ancestors came to California in the mid-19th century; I suspect many people, like me, think of California in strictly modern (if not postmodern) terms, so the fact that the state even has a history is something of a revelation. She does a great job, unsurprisingly, of filtering that history (and, as she moves to the present, sociology) throug...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Some of the history is a little tough to get through, but Didion makes plodding through the statistics worthwhile. She writes about loss and moving on and the contradictions in Californians' way of thinking, and manages to tie everything together with a simple memory of her mother. I'd wish that Didion could be freed of her obsession with writing about death, but she always does it so beautifully and matter-of-factly that everything she's gone through feels like your own memories, your own hards...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Alicia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel-california

My new friend Chris sent me this book after I took him to Point Reyes for the day. I think I did a pretty good job of convincing him that California is a really nice place to live. He recommended (and sent me) this book - an homage and narrative of the state by one of its most revered writers. It's really fascinating. It's a fairly slim book, but it took me two weeks to get through. That's a big compliment - I kept slowing down and rereading passages, unwilling to miss anything.

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Sep 09, 2010 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

During college, I heard Joan Didion read from this book. She is a miniscule person with giant glasses, a quiet voice, and a knack for putting words together that really blows me away. I finally got around to reading it. Joan Didion could write a book about plastic bags and I'd still read it, and still probably like it. This topic wasn't something I particularly give a damn about (California history), but her writing is so elegant, understated and thoughtful that I liked it for form over substanc...more

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About Joan Didion

Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She's best known for her novels and her literary journalism.
Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.

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Quotes from Where I Was From

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.” — 59 people liked it

“The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.” — 11 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/423.Where_I_Was_From?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320538660l/423.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/423.Where_I_Was_From?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Where I Was From by Joan Didion[/url]

Where I Was From

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