Anatole Broyard - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

Broyard first married Aida Sanchez, a black Puerto Rican with whom he had a daughter Gala. They divorced after Broyard returned from military service in World War II.

In 1961 at the age of 40, Broyard married again, to Alexandra (Sandy) Nelson, who was a modern dancer and a younger woman of Norwegian-American ancestry. He was indirect about his family, but she learned about him. They had two children, Todd, born in 1964, and a daughter Bliss, born in 1966. The Broyards raised their children as white in suburban Connecticut. When they were young adults, Sandy urged Broyard to tell them about his family (and theirs), but he never did.

Shortly before he died, Broyard wrote a statement which some people later took to represent his views. In explaining why he so missed his friend the writer Milton Klonsky, with whom he used to talk every day, he said that after Milton died, "No one talked to me as an equal." Although critics framed the issue of Broyard's identity as one of race, Broyard wanted equality and acceptance: he wanted neither to be talked down to nor to be looked up to, as either masked the true human being.

Sandy told their children of their father's secret before his death. Broyard died of prostate cancer, diagnosed in 1989. His first child and oldest daughter, Gala, was not acknowledged in his New York Times obituary.