When I'm stuck writing one of the first essaysists I look to for inspiration is Joan Didion. I reviewed her collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem recently, and while I only gave it a B I really loved it. As a collection I just thought it moved rather slowly. While reading that collection I found another essay by her called In Bed. The version I'm linking to is a little different from the version I read in The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
, but you'll get the idea. It's very short-- just about four pages. I was drawn to this essay because I've been experiencing some medical issues recently that are outside of my control. I could really relate to Didion's story about migraine, an illness she has struggled with her entire life and has absolutely no control over.
This essay is really more personal than most of Didion's other work-- The Year of Magical Thinking
removed from that statement. She does very little "journalism" in this piece, although she does have a good paragraph of research about migraine and what causes them. Research is something I really admire about Joan Didion's writing, and it's something I wish I could incorporate into my writing more. Through research Didion is able to give us a whole new understanding of what a migraine is, and then when we have the scientific understanding of it that makes our understanding of her personal experience that much stronger. I also love that she includes others outside herself who experience migraine. She doesn't describe anyone directly, but lists off other kinds of people who are challenged by migraine, including "unfortunate children as young as two years old." She weaves herself into these people as well though; directly after the previous quotation she mentions her first migraine happened when she was eight.
And of course this essay is about migraine-- but it's also about having no understand of something that effects you every day. It's a universal problem, and it transcends the "simple human experience" and moves to our experience as a nation. War effects some people every day, they cannot even begin to understand it or control it, but it comes. This is an extreme example, but when Didion says, "We do not escape heredity. I have tried in most of the available ways to escape my own migrainous heredity... but I still have migraine" --- I'm led to think that it's more than just medical history we try to escape, it's our connections with anything we'd rather not be a part of.
This video is really interesting in regards to Joan Didion. She kind of describes her love of writing in this short interview.
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