I recently watched a 2023 Disney+ documentary called Joan Baez: I Am a Noise. This film was deeply personal and revealed a lot about her as an artist and as a person. For Hispanic Heritage Month, I think it’s important to talk about her story.
In the documentary, she talked a little bit about her experience as a half-Mexican woman growing up in the 1950s. She talked about how other children would make comments about her tan skin and how it made her feel inferior to white people. She said that a lot of that inferiority manifested itself as anxiety that she’s carried with her for her entire life.
Baez also alluded to her and her sister facing uncomfortable sexual advances from their father. This kind of trauma leaves a lasting impact on the psyche, which contributed to her mental instability.
Baez revealed that because of her anxiety and trauma, she has been in therapy since she was 16 years old. Therapy is still stigmatized today, so seeking help in the 1950s must have required a lot of courage, and while therapy helped her symptoms, it didn’t make them disappear. So, she channeled her emotions into her writing.
After performing some of her songs at Club 47, she became a folk voice at the center of the counterculture movement at just 18 years old. She was so famous that she gave Bob Dylan an audience when she invited him on stage during her tour. Through singing together, they fell in love. But after propelling Dylan to fame, he surpassed her in some ways and left her behind. While she has since forgiven him, she described this as being a real heartbreak for her at the time.
Heartbreak was not the only downside to her fame. As a pacifist who wanted to help people in need, she felt conflicted by her enjoyment of the attention she got from fame and the guilt she felt from living a privileged life.
Ultimately, Baez turned her guilt into action and became involved in the Civil Rights movement and later the Antiwar movement. She protested alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and, for a time, was married to anti-Vietnam War activist David Harris.
Her marriage story and experience as a mother are very honest and relevant decades later. She struggled with balancing her career and her mental illness with motherhood at a time when society could not understand that (which it still does not fully understand today). She also spoke about how hard it was for her to be in a relationship when her mental illness made intimacy feel stifling, which is something I resonate with.
The documentary paints a much clearer picture of her life than I have, so I recommend watching it; it is emotional and relatable. Or, at the very least, listen to my favorite song she has ever written: “I Know You Rider.”