Creative Writing Studio: Didion's California

Undergraduate / Graduate

Across the several decades of her career, Joan Didion continually grappled with the myths, realities, facts and illusions of her home state in essays and memoirs. Though she lived in New York City for the last 35 years of her life, some of her most indelible work focuses our attention on images of the so-called "Golden West": the hippie movement in San Franciso in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," the Manson Family murder trial in "The White Album," the Donner Party in Where I Was From, as well as Patty Hearst, Alcatraz, the Reagans and wildfire season, to name a few of many. In this class, we'll study several of her California-centered works and write our personal essays about place, history, our moment in time and where we are from. We'll also attempt to understand the hallmarks of her prose style, her enduring appeal, the issue of her celebrity, among other possibilities.