Joan Didion on Calle Ocho

In "Miami," Amid the Never-Castros, Contras, CIA, JFK: What's Not to Like?

Joan Didion’s obsession with Latin America hit a fever pitch in the 1980s with three consecutive books: “Salvador” (1983), “Democracy” (1984), and “Miami” (1986), the latter being her exploration of Cuban Miami during the Reagan years. Didion, who died December 23, 2021, has been a continuing media obsession ever since. Her complex legacy is dissected; her distinctive sentences parsed. In the June 2022 issue of The Atlantic, staff writer Caitlin Flanagan tries to answer the question “What was it that gave her such power?” in a cover story called “Chasing Joan Didion.” Flanagan tries to find the answer in the homes in which Didion lived. Being fascinated with South Florida since my grandparents began summering there in the 1950s and my family’s migration there beginning in the late 1960s (but not me, brother, not me), “Miami” played into my fascination with the changes in Miami, which was becoming the gateway to Latin America. In certain parts of the city, Spanish wasn’t the second lan…