nearly every article about Didion I’ve ever read appears contractually obligated to make the same breathlessly, quasi-fetishistic observation: that she is a “fifth-generation Californian.” Fifth-generation Californian is a way of reminding first-generation Californians like myself that our stories mean less, matter less, weigh less: four generations less, to be exact. Fifth-generation Californian, rather than read as a distinctly banal American settler colonial horror story, is recited like a land deed, ready to evict those of us with frailer claims to California; frailer claims to the right
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