Evelyn McDonnell, Author at Ms. Magazine https://msmagazine.com/author/emcdonnell/ More Than A Magazine, A Movement Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:49:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-ms-logo-32x32.jpg Evelyn McDonnell, Author at Ms. Magazine https://msmagazine.com/author/emcdonnell/ 32 32 Forget East Coast Cool—Joan Didion Was a California Woman https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/29/joan-didion-book-excerpt-california/ Tue, 29 Jul 2025 22:04:40 +0000 https://msmagazine.com/?p=384015 An excerpt of The World According to Joan Didion, by Evelyn McDonnell, out July 29:

In a little-known 1978 speech, Joan Didion wrestled with the meaning of womanhood, feminism and identity in her home state of California.

Didion wrote, “I realized that I have been writing about the California woman all my adult life, that what it means to be a California woman has been a great question to me—the California woman has been—if not exactly my subject—at least quite certainly my material.”

Being a woman in a long line of mothers of courage, in community with other women, and a link in a chain to future women was intrinsic to Joan Didion’s identity.

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]]> How Being Slut-Shamed by The New York Times Brought Out the Feminist in Joan Didion https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/23/joan-didion-archives-book-jacket-cover-image-new-york-times/ Wed, 23 Jul 2025 18:01:06 +0000 https://msmagazine.com/?p=383624 In 1984, Joan Didion's best-selling, critically acclaimed books didn’t stop a respected critic such as Christopher Lehmann-Haupt from presuming he had the right to criticize the publicity photo for her novel Democracy. The black-and-white image, he wrote, “presents the author wading in a skirt and sweater that cling sufficiently to reveal somewhat more of the anatomy than one is accustomed to seeing in a dust-jacket portrait"—then, without providing evidence, that “Miss Didion’s dust-jacket image was thought to be in questionable taste by a number of fastidious observers, including her English publisher.”

Joan Didion’s husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, wrote a long, fuming, deadly serious and rather hilarious letter to Lehmann-Haupt defending his wife’s honor, arguing he "would stick pasties on the Venus de Milo and call it taste. It is a taste I want no part of.”

Lehmann-Haupt conceded defeat. The New York Times critic responded, “Dear John: Thanks for writing. I guess you’re right.” 

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