Daybreak: An Autobiography

Such a lovely little book. I've been reading from my own shelves lately, books that I picked up here and there planning to read one day and now the day has come. This one is a yellowed paperback with a 1969 publishing date, a book I never knew existed (until I saw it) although I've liked Miss Joanie most of my life, first for her music, later for her spirit.
There is nothing anywhere in the little volume about about performing or about her career, although she was really on top in those years. Instead it's a collection of personal stories, all sweetly and simply written, about her mother, her father, Mimi, her childhood terrors, group therapy, Ira Sandperl, her belief in the power of non-violent resistance to evil, and these stories are show more interspersed with dreams and poem. Unexpected and a real treat for me. show less

Read when I was in high school and was very meaningful to me at the time. It has a lot of nice things about her family, and a great chapter about arguing about non-violence and how pointless that is.

Originally released in 1969, much of Baez's career still lay ahead when this came out. Still, this is a great read; part prose poetry, part dream journal, part hallucinatory childhood recollections. Even then she had a full life to look back on; a peripatetic one with her Quaker-physicist father, being a house parent at Perkins School for the Blind, and more. Her music career underway by the time of the book, she gets to name drop. She paints an obscure of Bob Dylan as "The Dada King" and recalls poignantly her departed brother-in-law Richard Fariña. Baez also recounts her close friendship and collaboration with Antiwar activist Ira Sandperl, mentions Badger King in an aside and also recalls Florence Beaumont's self-immolationas a show more Vietnam War protest. show less

Lightweight look at Baez's life up to 1966. She shares some info about formative experiences and relationships, as well as a few dreams.

I have the Panther 1968 Edition.