Joan Didion, The “Windy Bitch” and Where I Was From

I question the character of Mexican horticulturist Amado Vazquez, considering he named an orchid after Joan Didion. Myriam Gurba mentions him in the section titled “The White Onion” of her 2023 Creep, which critiques Didion’s racial grammar and the silenced Native American and Mexican voices that haunt her work. She is one of the few writers willing to critique Didion and the white literary establishment for positioning her as a prominent California writer.