Anatole Broyard (1920-1990) was born in New Orleans. He was part of an extended Lousiana Creole family.
Broyard moved to New York after World War II. He wrote articles for journals and magazines such as The Partisan Review and The New Republic.
His first marriage to a black-Puerto Rican woman ended in divorce. He married a white woman of Norwegian origin and they had two children together. He passed the rest of his life as "white." His daughter, Bliss Broyard, learned that he was "colored" when he was on his death bed. She has written a moving account of his life and the after-effects of his revelation on her own take on identity called One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life: A Story of Race & Family Secrets.
Broyard once wrote: "My mother and father were too folksy for me, too colorful . . . Eventually, I ran away to Greenwich Village, where no had been born of a mother and father, where the people I met had sprung from their own brows or from the pages of a bad novel . . ."
Broyard worked as a critic for the New York Times Book Review and became a central figure in the Bohemian set, counting among his social circle many writing superstars. He wrote two books during his lifetime and two were published posthumously including the excellent, Intoxicated by My Illness.
He died in 1990 of prostate cancer.
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Mixed Experience History Month is an annual blog post series celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established on Heidi Durrow's blog Light-skinned-ed Girl in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to illuminate achievements of multiracial and multicultural individuals (not tragic mulattoes) and people and events central to the Mixed experience. Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog, or Mixed Chicks Chat blog! Thanks for reading. You can also read past year's series: 2007, 2008, 2009.
