"Didion is an gold medal narcissist. Look at it in her face, her deathly cool self-obsession. She wrote the book to "get IT off her mind?" how telling. IT? Funny name for a daughter. Face it: There was no room in her life/drama for a beautiful daughter full of life who would draw attention away from Didion (look at the daughter at age 8 or 9 and see a vibrant life force that would outshine her mother in a matter of time). I could barely stomach the narcissistic prose bleating about her husband's death. No one could/would out live her. Her daughter would die before her, she had to, it was an unspoken rule, there was not room for both of them. Didion is surrounded by enablers. And yes, she can write, well, but who can read IT?" - Candida Worthington
"Why do people care about such stupid, self-indulgent, abusive people? Why does anyone want to enter the world of these precious non-entities? And it is sad how the psychological abuse of the daughter is glossed over. Instead we are supposed to be fascinated, somehow, by these people's oh-so-important "work". I just don't get it." - JS7
"It's hard to believe someone as bright as Didion could really be so clueless as to why her daughter was so 'troubled'.
As an adopted adult, I can tell you that Quintana was hardly unique. THOUSANDS of adoptees cannot make sense of the abandonment, the unacknowledged grief of losing their families,and the weathering the shift a CHILD must make into a family of strangers. Adoptees overpopulate residential treatment centers, prisons, etc. We are not an emotionally healthy lot.
Didion really ought to consider psychologist David Kirschner's theory 'adopted child syndrome' to understand her daughter, as opposed to the tired 'bi polar disorder' explaination. Everything Quintana lived through as a depressed child and a lost adult is outlined in the lifelong work of the late Betty Jean Lifton and adoptive mother and author Nancy Verrier's book, "The Primal Wound".
Didion claiming ignorance as to why her daughter was so emotionally pained is frustrating to those of us who have experienced life much like Quintana did, no matter who we came from, or to whom we were given to: the commonality is *being* adopted. It really is a life long condition as opposed to an 'event'."- Michelle Booth
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jan/02/joan-didions-emblue-nightsem/
As an adopted adult, I can tell you that Quintana was hardly unique. THOUSANDS of adoptees cannot make sense of the abandonment, the unacknowledged grief of losing their families,and the weathering the shift a CHILD must make into a family of strangers. Adoptees overpopulate residential treatment centers, prisons, etc. We are not an emotionally healthy lot.
Didion really ought to consider psychologist David Kirschner's theory 'adopted child syndrome' to understand her daughter, as opposed to the tired 'bi polar disorder' explaination. Everything Quintana lived through as a depressed child and a lost adult is outlined in the lifelong work of the late Betty Jean Lifton and adoptive mother and author Nancy Verrier's book, "The Primal Wound".
Didion claiming ignorance as to why her daughter was so emotionally pained is frustrating to those of us who have experienced life much like Quintana did, no matter who we came from, or to whom we were given to: the commonality is *being* adopted. It really is a life long condition as opposed to an 'event'."- Michelle Booth
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jan/02/joan-didions-emblue-nightsem/
The Leonard Lopate Show
Joan Didion's memoir Blue Nights (radio interview)