New book explores Joan Didion's impact on American literature: "We Tell Ourselves Stories"
SACRAMENTO – An extraordinary woman with deep Sacramento roots is being celebrated in a new book.
"I think she's undefinable, kind of by design. She's just a very brilliant writer in different mediums," said New York Times Film Critic Alissa Wilkinson.
Wilkinson is the author of "We Tell Ourselves Stories". The book and title pay tribute to acclaimed writer and Sacramento native Joan Didion.
"Often, she's really good at seeing how media and political and social culture have come together in American life," Wilkinson said.
Three years after her death, Didion is still recognized for her ability to observe the world and write honestly about it.
"Part of the reason her writing about Hollywood is so powerful, and later her writing about political culture as Hollywood seeps into it … is she really knows what she's talking about. She's been there," Wilkinson said.
Didion was born in Sacramento in 1934 and often said her childhood home on 22nd and T streets shaped her life.
"She writes a lot about the stories she believed about California," Wilkinson said.
Didion attended McClatchy High School and Sacramento City College before graduating from UC Berkeley.
She landed her first job in Manhattan – and would then meet her future husband.
Some of Didion's most influential writing can be found in her personal memoirs.
"When we talk about mortality we're talking about our children," Didion wrote in her memoir "Blue Nights."
As for Wilkinson, she takes her readers on a journey of new discoveries about the fifth-generation Sacramentan.
"[It] started out as a book about Joan Didion in Hollywood and kind of became something bigger as I started writing it," Wilkinson said.
"We Tell Ourselves Stories" is out in bookstores now.
