For years, Joan Didion captured audiences with her dry wit and sophisticated, sharp prose, writing about politics, current events and stars until, ultimately, becoming a star herself. Many come across Didion as the author of some of the literary world’s finest works—Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking—but fail to recognize her as the incredible screenwriter that she was. After moving to the Hollywood Hills in 1965, Didion, along with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, spent much of her time writing multiple screenplays, launching her deep in to the politics, nuances, and mythologies of Hollywood.

Though this book contains pieces of Didion’s life, Wilkinson makes it clear from the beginning that this is not a biography. Wilkinson’s aim in We Tell Ourselves Stories is to look at the narratives that Hollywood film has given us, allowing viewers a unique way to understand their own lives, and to look back at how Hollywood influenced and shaped Didion’s own work and life. Didion once said, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means”. Here, Wilkinson shows readers that film has been doing exactly that for all of us—Didion included—for decades and decades.
“What I’m arguing here is that Didion is perhaps best, or most fruitfully, understood through the lens of American mythmaking in Hollywood. She was influenced by it, came to understand how it worked, and then used it as a tool to understand the rest of the world.”

A captivating blend of biography, film and cultural history, and literary critique. Wilkinson writes with sharp focus, providing plentiful and rich research, giving readers a deeper understanding of Joan Didion’s work and the unrelenting grasp that Hollywood has on the imagination.

Thank you W. W. Norton & Co for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Available Mar. 11 2025. *Quotes are pulled from an advanced reader copy and are subject to change prior to publication*

I've always loved learning about the film industry’s behind-the-scenes magic, and *We Tell Ourselves Stories* opened my eyes to so much more of its history. This book dives into Joan Didion’s life, showing how her experiences in Hollywood as a screenwriter and observer of its myths shaped her incredible storytelling. From her fascination with John Wayne to her critiques of how Hollywood sensationalized America’s fears, this cultural biography weaves Didion’s personal journey with the larger-than-life legacy of Tinseltown. It’s a fascinating mix of film history and literary insight that left me with a new appreciation for both Didion’s work and the power of movies to shape our collective imagination.