The propulsive force behind Where I Was From is Didion’s questions about Californian identity, which appears to her full of dissonances that weigh down the state’s ability to see its past and society clearly. She claims that her mission is to confront and untangle these contradictions of Californian identity.

California envisions itself as a land of entrepreneurial individuals who can maximize their skills and luck to strike big and prosper in adverse conditions. Didion demonstrates a prominent disdain for what she regards as government “handouts” in federal investment, because she believes Californians should be able to find their own opportunities for enrichment. Didion catalogues all the ways Californian society depends on government money to fund its way of life. For example, the federal government paid for the extensive civic infrastructure that controls the Sacramento River Valley and turned it into habitable and profitable land, counter to the local belief in individual resilience. Didion also shows the kind of government dependence that hides behind a corporate façade of independence. In Lakewood, citizens based their lives around the prosperity of the Douglas plant, but the company eventually followed the money to states with looser regulation and lower labor costs, leaving the Lakewood community behind. Didion, who inherited land and stocks from her own family, does not specify what kind of investment or employment would be acceptable to her for Californians. 

Didion believes that another key confusion of the Californian identity is the state’s dual promotion of social responsibility and sanctioning of xenophobia. Didion finds that California’s distaste for immigrants—especially racial minorities—can be traced to the earliest days of settlement as a method for white Americans to consolidate their new community and create a base of power, even though they themselves were “new” people without native ties to the land. Xenophobia became both the unwritten and codified law of the land, setting “new people” apart from the “true” Californians and giving white colonizers different access to social services and employment opportunities. Didion tracks the continued use of “new people” as scapegoats for California’s social and economic ills. 

Didion also highlights California’s sinister willingness to abandon its own people in the name of profit and maintaining “normalcy.” Despite growing up hearing about the “code of the west” (96), which emphasized one’s responsibilities to one’s fellow citizens, Didion depicts California as a socially fragile and conservative society. Both the asylum and prison systems are primarily viewed as sites of enrichment. For Didion, Californians do not think about the detainees in these facilities—those who come from their own community, often its most vulnerable members—because the potential for profit is more important to them. 

Didion traces this sentiment all the way back to the crossing story, where the weak and ailing were left behind as easily as superfluous items. At the root of all these contradictions, Didion argues, lies California’s promise of wealth, a facet of life that its citizens will do anything—and leave anyone behind—to secure for themselves.