Joan Didion

Joan Didion
Joan Didion is a collection of many things: political essayist, writer, public speaker, daughter, former mother, widow, atheist, and a human being that had experienced her life crumble before her eyes. Didion was born on December 5th, 1934 in Sacremento California. Didion’s parents were Frank Reese and Eduene Jerrett Didion and a brother named Jimmy.
The family was originally from the West but moved around when the father was a post officer in the Army Air Corps during WWII. Where I Was From, was a recollection of her early childhood days and family history explaining how the early Didion was shy and passive person who spent her time reading books. She made an effort to overcome the shyness by involving herself with acting and public speaking. As Didion aged and became a senior attending UC Berkeley, Vogue had a writing contest in which the winner lands a job as a contributing writer in the New York office. Didion won the contest and worked at Vogue for two years, marking the start of her career as a writer.
While working at Vogue she wrote and published her first novel, Run River. Even though the novel had favorable reviews, the novel was not a big hit in the bookstore mainly because the readers were not aware of Didion and was skeptical.
On 1964, Joan Didion married a Time novelist by the name of John Gregory Dunne. After marrying, the young couple adopted a daughter and named her Quintana Roo.
Didion’s collection of essays about counterculture was published in 1968 called, “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and is referred to as the “signature works of the decade.” Soon after the publication of her second novel, Play As It Lays, she and her husband made a screenplay for “Panic in Needle Park” in 1971. “Panic in Needle Park” introduced audiences to Al Pacino who starred in the box-office hit, “Scarface”. The married couple went on to write numerous screenplays for other movies while publishing separate literature such as Dunne’s True...