by Joan Didion
First published 2004
Joan Didion's family has called California home for generations. In Where I Was From, she peels back the layers of myth and legend surrounding the Golden State, exploring how the independent, self-reliant character of its settlers has shaped the state as we know it. Through intimate vignettes of her own life and those of her relatives, Didion illuminates the realities behind California's rugged individualism and the failed promise of the American Dream.
Genres: family, family-life, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, biography-memoir, 21st-century, cultural-studies
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: California
240 pages · Paperback