, which I see I never blogged about, that I bought Where I Was From
. And I so enjoyed it that I bought a copy for a friend even before finishing the book and sent it to her for her birthday.Didion does a great job of weaving together personal family history with other less-personal history, stories from the news, politics, and suppositions. She deftly uses stories and news items to show how us Californians are as blind to our own knowledge of self as others are. We tell the stories of independence and miners and farmers while ignoring the history of railroad subsidies, water rights and money, agribusiness and aerospace dependencies. We have the reputation of liberals (Left Coast) yet government money kept pouring in through aerospace and defense contracts.
I've often thought that the family stories we tell reflect a great deal of how we think about ourselves. Think of your family stories that are passed down and you can hear what your family is proud of. Think of the stories that don't get told and what dark corners they might shine a light in. The same is true of our history, which is after all just stories.
