https://twitter.com/alexanderchee/status/1474093696295526407
Yes. Where I Was From is her interrogation of that legacy and the role it plays in American myth.
Tidbit (someone must have the actual book?)
Joan Didion’s ‘Where I Was From’ LA Times, SEPT. 17, 2003
https://www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm-2003-sep-17-la-bk-joan-didion-...
… “Where I Was From” reveals more than most titles tend to, suggesting that the place has changed as much as the author has. The book, a memoir of sorts, is a patchwork, like the quilt she once hung in her house at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the sea that her forebears crossed desert voids and mountain gorges to reach. The quilt was made by her great-great-grandmother on the trek to California, a journey that became America’s 19th century creation myth. …
… Didion gives us the alpha and omega of the California soul from two very young women: the dearly bought wisdom of a child of the Donner Party -- “never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can” -- and the kidnapped and trapped child of the media age, Patty Hearst -- “Don’t examine your feelings. Never examine your feelings, they’re no help at all.”“
Nancy Cornwall of the Donner-Reed party and her grandmother Elizabeth Hardin of the corn bread recipe.
From “Where I Was From” By Joan Didion, Sept. 28, 2003. First chapter, excerpted in The New York Times
Can we check her “tree tops” to make sure the connections to England etc are good? Run the “ancestor report” and inspect.
Some familiar New England immigrants that show:
Francis Cooke, "Mayflower" Passenger
Richard Warren, "Mayflower" Passenger
Thomas Hazard, "Progenitor of the Hazard Family- USA"
She really is the Great American Novel.
I’m related through a newspaper man in Oregon - the Arkansas to Oregon line. I could swear I had more Shinns James Oliver Shinn
https://www.geni.com/path/Hatte-Blejer+is+related+to+Joan-Didion?from=6000000003496914092&path_type=blood&to=6000000007357576359
8th cousin once removed through a line I wasn't aware of.