What Did Kanye West's Mom Donda Do For A Living?

Kanye "Ye" West had a tight bond with his late mother, Donda West, and wasn't ashamed to show it. This was evident when he named his 2021 studio album in her honor. "My mother was my everything," Ye told MTV News in 2005, reflecting on his childhood. Donda died in November 2007 due to complications arising from cosmetic surgery. Her death hit the rapper hard. "If I had never moved to L.A. she'd be alive," he told Q magazine in 2015 (via E! News). "I don't want to go far into it because it will bring me to tears."

"She was protective ... she was a very forceful person who sought to fortify him for the real world," Ulysses Blakely, who acted as a father figure when Ye was growing up, told Page Six. "She knew that he was clearly not ordinary and wanted him to take special care and not be injured by our Western way of life." The mother of Ye, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016, was the right person to guide him, partly thanks to her professional training.

Ye didn't have famous parents like Hailey Bieber, and they certainly weren't as wealthy as Ed Sheeran's, yet some may have wondered what his mother did for a living — and while Ye can be over the top, Donda's profession was quite the opposite.

After earning a bachelor's degree in English at Virginia Union University in 1971, Donda West started her career as an English teacher at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Kanye West's hometown. She then opted to further her education by getting a doctorate degree at Auburn University in 1980. That year, she also divorced Ray West and moved with her son — then age 3 — to Chicago. 1980 also marked the beginning of her long tenure at Chicago State University. 

In 1987, Donda snagged a teaching position in Nanjing through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, prompting Donda to move to China with 10-year-old Ye. After completing the 1-year program, Donda and Ye moved back to Illinois, where she resumed her role at the Chicago State University and went on to chair its Department of English, Communications, Media Arts, and Theatre. "It was in her heart — English, poetry, literature," a student told the Los Angeles Times after her death. "She loved it and shared it with the world."

Besides her role as an educator, Donda was also an activist. She had been passionate about civil rights since before she could properly read or write. At age 5, Donda took part in the Katz Drug Store sit-in in Oklahoma. In May 2007, Donda added "author" to her résumé in the publication of "Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar," copies of which she can be seen signing in the picture above. 

Donda West's role in Kanye West's life went beyond that of a mother. She had faith in her son's talents and gave up her position at the Chicago State University to become his manager in 2004, the same year Ye released his first studio album, "The College Dropout." She went on to run some of his projects, acting as head of the Kanye West Foundation and CEO of Super Good, the company that gave rise to Kanye West Enterprises. 

Ye is grateful for his mother, not only for the influence she had on the consolidation of his career but also for having fostered the creativity that led to it. "She is my best friend in the whole world. My mother let me work on music, she helped me out, she used to drive me to the studio. She was really my first manager. She's still my general manager," he said on MTV's "Diary" in 2004. Donda knew her son had what it takes to become an impactful artist. So she went out of her way to help him grow into what he would become. 

When Ye wrote one of his first songs at 13, his mother agreed to foot the bill to let him record it. "It was just this little basement studio," she is reported as saying by the Chicago Tribune in 2007. "The microphone was hanging from the ceiling by a wire hanger. But he was so excited, I couldn't say no."