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A review by jennylimmy
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
3.0
Didion’s recollection of losing her only child — so soon after losing her husband — is haunting and powerful. Yet in a weird way, the book also reads like a celebrity tell-all: many famous friends, identified by full name, wearing and bearing designer gifts.
Defensively, Didion writes, “Privilege is a judgment. Privilege is an opinion. Privilege is an accusation. Privilege is an area to which, when I think of what she endured, when I consider what came later, I will not easily cop.”
But to have privilege does not make one less human, nor does it render one beyond the reach of suffering. Just because her daughter had caviar on a [Broadway? Hollywood?] dime as a child does not render her struggle with mental illness less real. If anything, embracing the privilege narrative would make her thesis stronger — it would remind us all that, no matter how lucky or powerful we become, we remain vulnerable, raw, and human.
Defensively, Didion writes, “Privilege is a judgment. Privilege is an opinion. Privilege is an accusation. Privilege is an area to which, when I think of what she endured, when I consider what came later, I will not easily cop.”
But to have privilege does not make one less human, nor does it render one beyond the reach of suffering. Just because her daughter had caviar on a [Broadway? Hollywood?] dime as a child does not render her struggle with mental illness less real. If anything, embracing the privilege narrative would make her thesis stronger — it would remind us all that, no matter how lucky or powerful we become, we remain vulnerable, raw, and human.