Status
Available
Genres
Publication
New York : Grove Press, [2019]
Description
"Sarah M. Broom's [memoir] The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina."--
Media reviews
For the author Sarah M Broom, home was once New Orleans East where her widowed mother, Ivory Mae, bought a house in 1961 with her late husband's life insurance. Broom’s award-winning debut, The Yellow House (Corsair), is a history of a house, a family and a neighbourhood brought low by neglect,
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racism and inequality. The youngest of 12 children, she had moved away from the city by the time Hurricane Katrina hit, but she paints a harrowing picture assembled from the memories of her family. Their heartbreak is compounded by the city’s treatment of its residents: Mae's house was eventually demolished without her knowledge, the notification letter having been sent to the abandoned property. Show Less
The Yellow House has garnered well-deserved praise; it won a National Book Award and appeared on several "best of the year" lists. More than just a narrative about a family, it is a masterpiece of personal and social history, examining the devastating consequences of decades of government neglect
By giving her family members space to tell their stories, Broom does far more than help knit this history back together. Like Hartman*, she also poses a set of vexing questions: How do you reconstruct the history of a place and a people whose importance has been deemed negligible (at best) by those in power? How do you use the archives to write the narrative of a life (or in this case, lives) without replicating the initial violence?
*Saidiya Hartman, "Venus in two acts".
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and revealing the very weak foundations on which the American dream rests. Using oral history, forgotten pieces of journalism, photographs, deeds, and other artifacts, The Yellow House helps to fill in those painful "silent leaps," as Broom puts it, that fragment the history of her family and her home of New Orleans East.By giving her family members space to tell their stories, Broom does far more than help knit this history back together. Like Hartman*, she also poses a set of vexing questions: How do you reconstruct the history of a place and a people whose importance has been deemed negligible (at best) by those in power? How do you use the archives to write the narrative of a life (or in this case, lives) without replicating the initial violence?
*Saidiya Hartman, "Venus in two acts".
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Sarah M. Broom is a writer of great intellect and breadth. She embraces momentous subjects. The Yellow House is about the relentless divestment of wealth from the African American family no matter how hard its members work; and our government's failure to protect its poor from predictable
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environmental catastrophe and subsequent trauma; and our gross neglect of poor neighborhoods; and sham promises that never materialize or are broken too easily, and the papering over of deep systemic problems by politicians and we the people. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member brenzi
The author's mother, Ivory May, raised her family with eight children in the eponymous Yellow House in New Orleans East, a down and out area, where the residents are barely getting by and if anything bad is going to happen, it does. Ivory May's second husband tries to keep up with home repairs but
This is the story of a family with a tenacious desire to succeed, hard working for the most part (except for one brother who succumbs to drugs) and very loving. Then along comes Hurricane Katrina and everything changes. But it really just comes together.
By that time the author is an adult and ready to produce the book she was meant to write. Through intense research into the annals of the history of the city, along with her family's history, Broom was able to trace the steps that lead to what was almost pre-destined: the destruction of the Yellow House and East New Orleans by the neglect of the city itself, the fore fathers who deemed this an acceptable place for people to reside and The history of Broom's family and neighbors.
I'm left with a feeling of sorrow and desolation. Broom did a stellar job relating how things just piled up until they finally could do nothing but collapse. The fact that she went back and rented an apartment in the French Quarter, where people like her are not supposed to be able to live, was astounding. The very saddest part was the fact that the city of New Orleans took eleven years to settle with Ivory May for her destroyed property. And for all that time, Brooms's brother, Carl maintains the property as if there is a house on it. Just incredibly sad and powerful. Probably one of the most powerful memoirs I've read. Highly recommended.
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it all seems quite beyond him. And just days after the author is born, he dies, leaving Ivory May on her own.This is the story of a family with a tenacious desire to succeed, hard working for the most part (except for one brother who succumbs to drugs) and very loving. Then along comes Hurricane Katrina and everything changes. But it really just comes together.
By that time the author is an adult and ready to produce the book she was meant to write. Through intense research into the annals of the history of the city, along with her family's history, Broom was able to trace the steps that lead to what was almost pre-destined: the destruction of the Yellow House and East New Orleans by the neglect of the city itself, the fore fathers who deemed this an acceptable place for people to reside and The history of Broom's family and neighbors.
I'm left with a feeling of sorrow and desolation. Broom did a stellar job relating how things just piled up until they finally could do nothing but collapse. The fact that she went back and rented an apartment in the French Quarter, where people like her are not supposed to be able to live, was astounding. The very saddest part was the fact that the city of New Orleans took eleven years to settle with Ivory May for her destroyed property. And for all that time, Brooms's brother, Carl maintains the property as if there is a house on it. Just incredibly sad and powerful. Probably one of the most powerful memoirs I've read. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member kidzdoc
New Orleans East is the newest section of the Crescent City, which is separated from the more populous and better known neighborhoods by the Industrial Canal, its western border and a passageway for ships that connects Lake Pontchartrain, the East's northern border, to the Mississippi River. The
The East began to gain significant numbers of residents in the 1960s, when developers and politicians touted the former cypress marshland as a "new frontier" that would soon become "the brightest spot in the South, the envy of every land-shy community in America." The creation of the NASA New Orleans East facility during the Space Age was the main driver for the East's development, as houses of varying quality and design were quickly constructed to meet the hyperbolic prediction that 175,000 or more people would move there within a decade. The East was originally planned to be an exclusively or nearly entirely white community, as segregation was still rampant in the city and state, but increasing numbers of African Americans began to move there in the 1980s once the last remnants of Jim Crow were extinguished, leading to white flight to the suburbs. Some very nice neighborhoods remained, particularly in the communities close to Lake Forest Boulevard and Read Boulevard near Lake Pontchartrain and north of Chef Menteur Highway, but areas to the south of Chef Menteur and close to the Intracoastal Waterway fell into progressive disrepair, due to its impoverished residents and the worsening crime experienced throughout the city. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 proved to be a devastating blow to the East, as thousands of houses were severely and irreparably damaged, and many formerly inhabited streets and sections are now bereft of people.
4121 Wilson Avenue is the location of the Yellow House, the shotgun house named for the color of its siding, that the author's mother, Ivory Mae Gant, purchased in 1961 at the age of 19, using money from the insurance policy she received after her first husband died unexpectedly. The street is on the south side of Chef Menteur Highway, with similar shotgun houses on one side and industrial development on the other. Ivory remarried, and Sarah Monique Broom was born to Ivory and Simon Broom on New Year's Eve 1979, months before Simon died of a cerebral aneurysm. By the time of her father's death the house contained a dozen children, with Sarah being the baby of the clan, as her mother never remarried nor allowed another man to touch her.
Sarah left home after high school to attend college at the University of North Texas and UC Berkeley, and after graduation she moved to Harlem to work for O, the Oprah Magazine and as a program director of a radio station in the capital of Burundi, before she returned to Harlem, with infrequent visits back home, as the Yellow House fell into progressive disrepair after her father's death. She was living in NYC in 2005 when Katrina decimated the Yellow House, causing her family to flee the city, and from the home that none of them would ever live in again.
'The Yellow House' is an autobiography of the author and her maternal family over a century, an account of what happened to her mother and siblings who lived in the house during and after The Water, her name for Katrina, and a reconciliation with the brothers and sisters who she hadn't seen often since her move away from New Orleans. It also casts its gaze on New Orleans East and the city as a whole, as she uses the vantage point of an apartment in the French Quarter, the historical and cultural center of the city, to do her research. It is one of the most interesting, well written and compelling memoirs I've ever read, which was of particular interest to me as I lived in New Orleans for three years while attending college and had close relatives and friends there who were also forced to flee the city after Katrina and have never returned. I have no criticisms of this superb book, which was a worthy winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and it deserves a 5 star rating from me.
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East is also bounded by the Intracoastal Waterway to the south, which connects the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico in the southeastern corner of Louisiana, and the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge to the east, an uninhabitable marshland populated by waterfowl, fish and alligators. New Orleans East is well off the beaten path of not only tourists but also most residents of the city, and unless one works there or has "people" (family or friends) who live in the East there is very little reason to visit.The East began to gain significant numbers of residents in the 1960s, when developers and politicians touted the former cypress marshland as a "new frontier" that would soon become "the brightest spot in the South, the envy of every land-shy community in America." The creation of the NASA New Orleans East facility during the Space Age was the main driver for the East's development, as houses of varying quality and design were quickly constructed to meet the hyperbolic prediction that 175,000 or more people would move there within a decade. The East was originally planned to be an exclusively or nearly entirely white community, as segregation was still rampant in the city and state, but increasing numbers of African Americans began to move there in the 1980s once the last remnants of Jim Crow were extinguished, leading to white flight to the suburbs. Some very nice neighborhoods remained, particularly in the communities close to Lake Forest Boulevard and Read Boulevard near Lake Pontchartrain and north of Chef Menteur Highway, but areas to the south of Chef Menteur and close to the Intracoastal Waterway fell into progressive disrepair, due to its impoverished residents and the worsening crime experienced throughout the city. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 proved to be a devastating blow to the East, as thousands of houses were severely and irreparably damaged, and many formerly inhabited streets and sections are now bereft of people.
4121 Wilson Avenue is the location of the Yellow House, the shotgun house named for the color of its siding, that the author's mother, Ivory Mae Gant, purchased in 1961 at the age of 19, using money from the insurance policy she received after her first husband died unexpectedly. The street is on the south side of Chef Menteur Highway, with similar shotgun houses on one side and industrial development on the other. Ivory remarried, and Sarah Monique Broom was born to Ivory and Simon Broom on New Year's Eve 1979, months before Simon died of a cerebral aneurysm. By the time of her father's death the house contained a dozen children, with Sarah being the baby of the clan, as her mother never remarried nor allowed another man to touch her.
Sarah left home after high school to attend college at the University of North Texas and UC Berkeley, and after graduation she moved to Harlem to work for O, the Oprah Magazine and as a program director of a radio station in the capital of Burundi, before she returned to Harlem, with infrequent visits back home, as the Yellow House fell into progressive disrepair after her father's death. She was living in NYC in 2005 when Katrina decimated the Yellow House, causing her family to flee the city, and from the home that none of them would ever live in again.
'The Yellow House' is an autobiography of the author and her maternal family over a century, an account of what happened to her mother and siblings who lived in the house during and after The Water, her name for Katrina, and a reconciliation with the brothers and sisters who she hadn't seen often since her move away from New Orleans. It also casts its gaze on New Orleans East and the city as a whole, as she uses the vantage point of an apartment in the French Quarter, the historical and cultural center of the city, to do her research. It is one of the most interesting, well written and compelling memoirs I've ever read, which was of particular interest to me as I lived in New Orleans for three years while attending college and had close relatives and friends there who were also forced to flee the city after Katrina and have never returned. I have no criticisms of this superb book, which was a worthy winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and it deserves a 5 star rating from me.
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LibraryThing member Cariola
This award-winning memoir got off to a slow start for me, but I stuck with it, and I'm glad that I did. At the center of Broom's memoir is her mother's house in New Orleans East--even though the house itself no longer exists by about mid-book. 'The Yellow House' is not just a personal memoir, it's
Sarah (known to the family as Monique) is the youngest of twelve children born to Ivory Mae Broom. She never knew her father, Simon, who died of an aneurysm shortly after her birth. Sarah, her siblings, and several step- and half-siblings were raised in the yellow shotgun house that her mother purchased when she was first widowed at age nineteen. A proud woman, Ivory Mae managed to make ends meet on a nursing home carer's salary, even scraping together the funds to pay for Sarah's private schooling. At home, she constantly cleaned her house, doing her best to provide a safe and loving home.
I was surprised, then, to learn that no one but family was ever invited into the home. Ivory Mae's reason was that other people wouldn't see it like they did. The reality was that, despite her efforts, the house was falling apart. There were rats, water stains, cracks in the foundation, holes in the drywall, even places where walls were missing. But for the Broom family, it was home--at least until Hurricane Katrina hit.
Sarah Broom tells a brave story of a close extended family dealing with the hands that they were dealt: early and unexpected deaths, teenage pregnancies, crime, addiction, displacement and more. Through it all, Ivory Mae created a loving home in a now-lost neighborhood that was where her children still feel is where they belong. It's bittersweet to watch Sarah and her older brothers Carl and Michael returning to the muddy vacant lot where the yellow house once stood.
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an exploration of the meaning of home and our need to identify the place where we belong.Sarah (known to the family as Monique) is the youngest of twelve children born to Ivory Mae Broom. She never knew her father, Simon, who died of an aneurysm shortly after her birth. Sarah, her siblings, and several step- and half-siblings were raised in the yellow shotgun house that her mother purchased when she was first widowed at age nineteen. A proud woman, Ivory Mae managed to make ends meet on a nursing home carer's salary, even scraping together the funds to pay for Sarah's private schooling. At home, she constantly cleaned her house, doing her best to provide a safe and loving home.
I was surprised, then, to learn that no one but family was ever invited into the home. Ivory Mae's reason was that other people wouldn't see it like they did. The reality was that, despite her efforts, the house was falling apart. There were rats, water stains, cracks in the foundation, holes in the drywall, even places where walls were missing. But for the Broom family, it was home--at least until Hurricane Katrina hit.
Sarah Broom tells a brave story of a close extended family dealing with the hands that they were dealt: early and unexpected deaths, teenage pregnancies, crime, addiction, displacement and more. Through it all, Ivory Mae created a loving home in a now-lost neighborhood that was where her children still feel is where they belong. It's bittersweet to watch Sarah and her older brothers Carl and Michael returning to the muddy vacant lot where the yellow house once stood.
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LibraryThing member Beth.Clarke
If you combined "Cane River" by Lalita Tademy and "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers, threw in some politics, violence, and a yellow house, you'd have this stunning memoir by Sarah Broom. Her voice is fresh and emotional. One of the best memoirs I've read. The story constantly shifts and grows into something
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new and unexpected. She's had an extraordinary life and is able to bring the readers right into her family's past and her current world. Show Less
LibraryThing member hemlokgang
What is the role, the meaning, of a house in history of a family? This memoir is the author's search for meaning, search for family, and search for identity. Always returning to the yellow house where she was the youngest of 12 children. Time divided into before and after "the water" (Hurricane
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Katrina), was described in terms of racial experience, family experience, and a search for her father. This is a probing, deceptively simple tale. The social awareness expressed by the author builds over the course of the memoir, as does her sense of self. A book worth reading! Show Less
LibraryThing member FormerEnglishTeacher
This book, ostensibly about the author’s home in New Orleans, is really about identifying the definition of home for every person. She lived all over the world, but Broom kept returning to New Orleans, to a section of the city that was so forgotten, it was often ignored on maps. And then when the
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“Water” came, Katrina, it was the final insult as the neighborhood and the beloved house was destroyed. I really enjoyed the writing of the book, but I felt the story was more a Broom family record, often with tedious detail. The National Book Award testifies to its worth, however. Broom will, not doubt be heard from for many years. Show Less
LibraryThing member EllenH
I did like this book. It really captured the politics and history of this city and the attempts to heal for this family and city after the "water".
LibraryThing member maryreinert
This is really a story of a large Black family living in New Orleans. The yellow house that their mother purchased when she was a 19 year old. In all twelve children would grow up in the house in the East Side of New Orleans, a part of New Orleans far different that the French Quarter and the
The opening of the story, tells of Ivory Mae's huge and complicated family background and was almost overwhelming to keep track of. Eventually, as I got the siblings and step-siblings in mind, the story started to become more interesting.
A large portion of the book tells of Sarah's own life, her education, her travels to Africa, and her relationships with her siblings including one brother who is an often-times scary addict. However, throughout Ivory Mae's resilience and love are steadfast.
Katrina destroys the house and the neighborhood. The road to "recovery" for New Orleans is a harsh look at the local government and the "Road to Recovery" program supposedly to help the residents come back. The final chapters of the book shows what a disaster that is as the neighborhood where the author grew up is now deserted and almost completely without city services.
The writing in the book is good, the family is interesting in that they are "average" people; Sarah has by far the widest experiences. Overall, a good read more about family relationships than a house and more about the City of New Orleans and the parts that no one ever thinks about.
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tourist sites.The opening of the story, tells of Ivory Mae's huge and complicated family background and was almost overwhelming to keep track of. Eventually, as I got the siblings and step-siblings in mind, the story started to become more interesting.
A large portion of the book tells of Sarah's own life, her education, her travels to Africa, and her relationships with her siblings including one brother who is an often-times scary addict. However, throughout Ivory Mae's resilience and love are steadfast.
Katrina destroys the house and the neighborhood. The road to "recovery" for New Orleans is a harsh look at the local government and the "Road to Recovery" program supposedly to help the residents come back. The final chapters of the book shows what a disaster that is as the neighborhood where the author grew up is now deserted and almost completely without city services.
The writing in the book is good, the family is interesting in that they are "average" people; Sarah has by far the widest experiences. Overall, a good read more about family relationships than a house and more about the City of New Orleans and the parts that no one ever thinks about.
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
xThis book. Wow. It is memoir, biography, history, and geography, all combined.
The Yellow House is the house where Sarah Broom grew up, and which was rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina. The city later demolished it, with little notice. Her mother than spent 11 years trying to get her Road
With 11 older siblings (some half- some full-), a father who died when she herself was 6 months old, and a mother who was widowed twice, and a childhood home she describes as her mother's "unruly 13th child), this book is Broom's examination of place, history, relationships, life, New Orleans, race, dreams, Katrina, post-Katrina recovery (or maybe "recovery"), and more. It is simply so well done it feels impossible to categorize.
I went into this book expecting a memoir, but the geography and history is so strong--as a history/geography double major back in the day (at Cal, where Broom got her MA in Journalism), I love this stuff. So worthy of the NBA for Nonfiction.
The Yellow House is the house where Sarah Broom grew up, and which was rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina. The city later demolished it, with little notice. Her mother than spent 11 years trying to get her Road
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Home grant--and she finally did, but the time and effort put into it!With 11 older siblings (some half- some full-), a father who died when she herself was 6 months old, and a mother who was widowed twice, and a childhood home she describes as her mother's "unruly 13th child), this book is Broom's examination of place, history, relationships, life, New Orleans, race, dreams, Katrina, post-Katrina recovery (or maybe "recovery"), and more. It is simply so well done it feels impossible to categorize.
I went into this book expecting a memoir, but the geography and history is so strong--as a history/geography double major back in the day (at Cal, where Broom got her MA in Journalism), I love this stuff. So worthy of the NBA for Nonfiction.
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LibraryThing member pivic
The things we have forgotten are housed. Our soul is an abode and by remembering houses and rooms, we learn to abide within ourselves.
—Gaston Bachelard
This author is a force to be reckoned with. By tapping the reader’s mind rather than ham-fistedly trying to make points, Broom allows for a
When I call my eldest brother, Simon, at his home in North Carolina to explain all of the things I want to know and why, he expresses worry that by writing this all down here, I will disrupt, unravel, and tear down everything the Broom family has ever built. He would like, now, to live in the future and forget about the past.
“There is a lot we have subconsciously agreed that we don’t want to know,” he tells me. When he asks about my project, I am imprecise, lofty, saying I am writing about “architecture and belonging and space.” “It is a problem when you are talking too much,” he says.
I take his sentence down in my notebook at the moment he says it, just as he says it. I have not added a single word. Nor have I taken anything away.
There is a sublime scent around all that Broom writes about the small and the big. She exercises firm control and lets texts feel rhythm in a way that allows the book to breathe.
Just after Eddie was born, Booker T. Washington High School changed its policy. Mothers were no longer accepted. Ivory Mae could, the school suggested, finish at a special school for delinquents, for messed-up kids, but she couldn’t see being set apart in this, the wrong way. She pleaded with the principal to please make an exception and take her back, but she was a poor example for the other girls now. Nothing about her looks and charm could change that he said. She had entered womanhood, her first dream of finishing high school and going to college, dissolved.
Mother spanks me in silence. Afterward I run into the living room where we are not supposed to be and threaten to call “child protection services” on the rotary phone. My mother says, Go right ahead, please call them, and that deflates the whole thing.
The book verges between the then and now as it does for people who are on the very brink between catastrophe and calm, between Hurricane Katrina and the now, somewhat.
Five days since the levees broke. There is nothing to do here except to feel helpless. All of the windows of my duplex are wide open tonight, to let the outside sounds come in. I am being particular about this because my loudmouthed neighbors remind me of home. I sit cross-legged before the television set in my swamp-green painted room, watching CNN on mute, searching only for Carl’s white cotton socks pulled up high, size 13 feet. In the day to day, I neglect serious consideration of any newspaper article except to scan for names and faces of my beloveds—Michael, Carl, Ivory, Karen, Melvin, Brittany. Imagine this being all that you can do. It is as paltry as it sounds.
This is a beautiful book of a person, a family, a city, and a future that grew and continues to grow in spite and because of life.
—Gaston Bachelard
This author is a force to be reckoned with. By tapping the reader’s mind rather than ham-fistedly trying to make points, Broom allows for a
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gentle and deep-delving trip through her past and present by means of family and places.When I call my eldest brother, Simon, at his home in North Carolina to explain all of the things I want to know and why, he expresses worry that by writing this all down here, I will disrupt, unravel, and tear down everything the Broom family has ever built. He would like, now, to live in the future and forget about the past.
“There is a lot we have subconsciously agreed that we don’t want to know,” he tells me. When he asks about my project, I am imprecise, lofty, saying I am writing about “architecture and belonging and space.” “It is a problem when you are talking too much,” he says.
I take his sentence down in my notebook at the moment he says it, just as he says it. I have not added a single word. Nor have I taken anything away.
There is a sublime scent around all that Broom writes about the small and the big. She exercises firm control and lets texts feel rhythm in a way that allows the book to breathe.
Just after Eddie was born, Booker T. Washington High School changed its policy. Mothers were no longer accepted. Ivory Mae could, the school suggested, finish at a special school for delinquents, for messed-up kids, but she couldn’t see being set apart in this, the wrong way. She pleaded with the principal to please make an exception and take her back, but she was a poor example for the other girls now. Nothing about her looks and charm could change that he said. She had entered womanhood, her first dream of finishing high school and going to college, dissolved.
Mother spanks me in silence. Afterward I run into the living room where we are not supposed to be and threaten to call “child protection services” on the rotary phone. My mother says, Go right ahead, please call them, and that deflates the whole thing.
The book verges between the then and now as it does for people who are on the very brink between catastrophe and calm, between Hurricane Katrina and the now, somewhat.
Five days since the levees broke. There is nothing to do here except to feel helpless. All of the windows of my duplex are wide open tonight, to let the outside sounds come in. I am being particular about this because my loudmouthed neighbors remind me of home. I sit cross-legged before the television set in my swamp-green painted room, watching CNN on mute, searching only for Carl’s white cotton socks pulled up high, size 13 feet. In the day to day, I neglect serious consideration of any newspaper article except to scan for names and faces of my beloveds—Michael, Carl, Ivory, Karen, Melvin, Brittany. Imagine this being all that you can do. It is as paltry as it sounds.
This is a beautiful book of a person, a family, a city, and a future that grew and continues to grow in spite and because of life.
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LibraryThing member kayanelson
I found this book very interesting as it told me things (not good) about New Orleans that I didn't know. The book is divided into 4 parts. The first part tells of the author's, Sarah Broom's ancestors. The second part was the story of Sarah's childhood. This part was the most interesting for me.
The book was well written and has given me a lot to think about. I must mention the racial inequality which is ever evident in the book and is so unfair and sad.
It's a great book.
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How someone can be raised so successfully against all odds is fascinating to me. The third part is the story of Katrina and the impact on her family. The final part is Sarah coming home to New Orleans and in a way accepting everything that's happened. The book was well written and has given me a lot to think about. I must mention the racial inequality which is ever evident in the book and is so unfair and sad.
It's a great book.
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LibraryThing member muddyboy
This is the compelling story of a family and a city. The memoir is told by the youngest daughter of the large Broom family who are based in "the yellow house" in east New Orleans far from the tourist areas of the French Quarter. The book covers the family both pre and post Katrina and the author's
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inability to purge herself of ties to New Orleans no matter where she moves. The book is also a story of survival because no matter what cards the family is dealt they persevere with dignity and strength. A wonderful book. Show Less
LibraryThing member novelcommentary
I wanted to work full-time at being what I had never wholly allowed myself to be: a writer. I would observe my family and my city, spend time in the city’s archives and with my mother’s old papers, collecting my family’s stories as a journalist might. Carrying a red tape recorder, I would
The Yellow House, winner of the National Book Award, is Sarah Bloom's memoir about growing up in East New Orleans. The disclaimer of the first word, East, lets the reads know this is not the famed French Quarter or rowdy Bourbon Street known to visitors. East New Orleans is the off the beaten path forgotten part of the city where Sarah's mother Ivory Mae bought a house with the insurance money left when her husband died. She was nineteen at the time and would go on to marry again, eventually raising 12 children, the author being the youngest. "We span the generations, born to every decade, beginning in the forties. I arrived ten hours before the eighties."
As the youngest, Ms. Bloom then relies on the stories of her brothers and various older relatives to recreate the tale of this house and the saga of its finality after Katrina has devastated the family home. Ms. Bloom packs her memoir with valuable history regarding the segregation policies of the sixties, of school being integrated long after Brown vs. Bd of Ed. She also provides a first hand account of the corruption after Katrina, or the Water as it's called, how it took eleven years to settle what was to become with the yellow house of her childhood.
Lines
Even as I write this, I am troubled again by what it meant for us—me and my eleven siblings—to have to cross Chef Menteur Highway, which was then and is now a sea of prostitution with cars pulling over, sometimes partway onto the sidewalk, creeping alongside you even if you were only a child on an errand; these were mostly men in cars, making deals.
Mom sent me as a kid to buy “liver cheese” for one dollar a pound. Years later, a graduate student at Berkeley, I would discover that the liver cheese we paid practically nothing for was dressed up, called pâté, and cost nine dollars a pound.
When you are babiest in a family with eleven older points of view, eleven disparate rallying cries, eleven demanding and pay-attention-to-me voices—all variations of the communal story—developing your own becomes a matter of survival. There can be, in this scenario, no neutral ground.
My mother is always saying, Begin as you want to end. But my beginning precedes me. Absences allow us one power over them: They do not speak a word. We say of them what we want. Still, they hover, pointing fingers at our backs. No place to go now but into deep ground.
1811 the largest slave revolt in American history, an army of five hundred or so, wound its way along the River Road for two days, strategically headed toward New Orleans to take over the city, stopping only to light plantations afire after loading up on weaponry. They made it far, considering—twenty of forty-one miles—before a local white militia halted them. Some slaves escaped; others were shot on the spot. Of the unlucky ones put on trial, most had their heads severed and placed on poles atop the River Road’s levees—forty miles of heads, the grisly trophies of petrified whites.
John McDonogh was a wealthy slave owner who in 1850 bequeathed half of his estate to New Orleans public schools, insisting that his money be used for “the establishment and support of free schools wherein the poor and the poor only and of both sexes and classes and castes of color shall have admittance.”
She was tall and thin with an oval face that held seeking eyes and controlled lips that seemed to be clamping down on something soft.
Alvin is my rough-playing next-door neighbor. By the time his mother dies when he is eleven—and suddenly so—he will be my soul brother and closest friend. Our relationship is so long that I cannot remember ever first meeting. He is hide-and-go-seek in wet summer air and five-cent Laffy Taffys with knock-knock jokes on the wrapper.
Our side of Wilson Avenue, the short end, seems a no-matter place where police cars routinely park, women’s heads bobbing up and down in the driver’s seat. I am struck with the wonder of this, how we live in a city where police take such peculiar coffee breaks.
The floor became pocked with holes. Around this time, the rats came to live with us, making so much noise in the kitchen while I was trying to read James Baldwin or sleep that I didn’t dare get up out of bed to see what they were doing.
“Paying attention to being alive”
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document almost every word, and these stories would become the book you are reading now."The Yellow House, winner of the National Book Award, is Sarah Bloom's memoir about growing up in East New Orleans. The disclaimer of the first word, East, lets the reads know this is not the famed French Quarter or rowdy Bourbon Street known to visitors. East New Orleans is the off the beaten path forgotten part of the city where Sarah's mother Ivory Mae bought a house with the insurance money left when her husband died. She was nineteen at the time and would go on to marry again, eventually raising 12 children, the author being the youngest. "We span the generations, born to every decade, beginning in the forties. I arrived ten hours before the eighties."
As the youngest, Ms. Bloom then relies on the stories of her brothers and various older relatives to recreate the tale of this house and the saga of its finality after Katrina has devastated the family home. Ms. Bloom packs her memoir with valuable history regarding the segregation policies of the sixties, of school being integrated long after Brown vs. Bd of Ed. She also provides a first hand account of the corruption after Katrina, or the Water as it's called, how it took eleven years to settle what was to become with the yellow house of her childhood.
Lines
Even as I write this, I am troubled again by what it meant for us—me and my eleven siblings—to have to cross Chef Menteur Highway, which was then and is now a sea of prostitution with cars pulling over, sometimes partway onto the sidewalk, creeping alongside you even if you were only a child on an errand; these were mostly men in cars, making deals.
Mom sent me as a kid to buy “liver cheese” for one dollar a pound. Years later, a graduate student at Berkeley, I would discover that the liver cheese we paid practically nothing for was dressed up, called pâté, and cost nine dollars a pound.
When you are babiest in a family with eleven older points of view, eleven disparate rallying cries, eleven demanding and pay-attention-to-me voices—all variations of the communal story—developing your own becomes a matter of survival. There can be, in this scenario, no neutral ground.
My mother is always saying, Begin as you want to end. But my beginning precedes me. Absences allow us one power over them: They do not speak a word. We say of them what we want. Still, they hover, pointing fingers at our backs. No place to go now but into deep ground.
1811 the largest slave revolt in American history, an army of five hundred or so, wound its way along the River Road for two days, strategically headed toward New Orleans to take over the city, stopping only to light plantations afire after loading up on weaponry. They made it far, considering—twenty of forty-one miles—before a local white militia halted them. Some slaves escaped; others were shot on the spot. Of the unlucky ones put on trial, most had their heads severed and placed on poles atop the River Road’s levees—forty miles of heads, the grisly trophies of petrified whites.
John McDonogh was a wealthy slave owner who in 1850 bequeathed half of his estate to New Orleans public schools, insisting that his money be used for “the establishment and support of free schools wherein the poor and the poor only and of both sexes and classes and castes of color shall have admittance.”
She was tall and thin with an oval face that held seeking eyes and controlled lips that seemed to be clamping down on something soft.
Alvin is my rough-playing next-door neighbor. By the time his mother dies when he is eleven—and suddenly so—he will be my soul brother and closest friend. Our relationship is so long that I cannot remember ever first meeting. He is hide-and-go-seek in wet summer air and five-cent Laffy Taffys with knock-knock jokes on the wrapper.
Our side of Wilson Avenue, the short end, seems a no-matter place where police cars routinely park, women’s heads bobbing up and down in the driver’s seat. I am struck with the wonder of this, how we live in a city where police take such peculiar coffee breaks.
The floor became pocked with holes. Around this time, the rats came to live with us, making so much noise in the kitchen while I was trying to read James Baldwin or sleep that I didn’t dare get up out of bed to see what they were doing.
“Paying attention to being alive”
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LibraryThing member froxgirl
"During the Tennessee Williams Festival Screaming Contest, when Stanleys compete to yell "Stella!" the best, the winner that year yelled "FEMA!" instead."
As the youngest of twelve children brought up in the desolate (even pre-Katrina) New Orleans East, the author brings us alongside, to live in the
Quotes: "We were composed children. We walked upright, possibly with airs, expecting great things of ourselves and everyone around us. Like her mother, my mother buried her rage and despair deep within, under layers and layers of poise."
"It is a terrible thing to see love misfire into a million different directions."
"Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit on."
"It is hard to talk about returning to a place you have not psychically left."
As the youngest of twelve children brought up in the desolate (even pre-Katrina) New Orleans East, the author brings us alongside, to live in the
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tumbledown house she thrived in and suffered through. The reader actually LEARNS Sarah, her mother Ivory Mae, her grandmother Rose, her brothers, her doomed childhood friend Alvin, the isolation of their neighborhood, and the family's shame of place and pride of blood. Sarah escapes to college in Texas, skitters across the world, to Harlem, Burundi, the French Quarter, Oprah Magazine, but never manages to shake her allegiance to her ravaged city and to that damned house.Quotes: "We were composed children. We walked upright, possibly with airs, expecting great things of ourselves and everyone around us. Like her mother, my mother buried her rage and despair deep within, under layers and layers of poise."
"It is a terrible thing to see love misfire into a million different directions."
"Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit on."
"It is hard to talk about returning to a place you have not psychically left."
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
A before and after memoir of a large family displaced from their home in East New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. As the name suggests, this area bounded by waterways (the Industrial Canal, the Intracoastal Waterway and Lake Pontchartrain) lies east of the old City of New Orleans, its downtown, its
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Garden District, its French Quarter; claimed from swamp and marshland to be a "suburb within the city", planned developments and apartment complexes proliferated until the oil bust brought it all to a halt, leaving proposed projects half-built, with highway interchanges that led nowhere and a dwindling, increasingly poorer population. As a young widow, the author's mother, Ivory Mae Webb, bought the yellow house with insurance money; she eventually raised 12 children there. By the time Sarah was born nearly 20 years later, the house had been subject to time, weather, poverty, subsidence, neglect, remodeling projects that were never quite finished, haphazard repairs, shoddy wiring, failing plumbing and the "shifty settling in of shame". Later, Sarah's mother would discourage the children from bringing friends home, because "this house not all that comfortable for other people". But it was Home, it was filled with love, with homemade curtains and birthday cakes, with pictures taken to commemorate special occasions like graduations and weddings, with Ivory Mae's determination to keep things as decent as possible. It was New Orleans to residents of the neighborhood; when Sarah took an apartment in the French Quarter, her mother came to visit---as a tourist in her home town. Even after Hurricane Katrina inundated the neighborhood and blew the house apart, Sarah and some of her siblings remained drawn to the derelict yellow house, and later to the vacant lot where it had once stood, keeping the grass cut and trash off the lot, even though it would never be "home" to any of them again. This is a powerful, challenging book. I found the first several chapters of family history interesting, but not quite fully engaging. However, once the author began telling stories of the times she remembered herself, the pages flew. Highly recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member banjo123
This is a memoir, about Broom's family, it's relationship to New Orleans, and the loss of the family home in New Orleans East due to Hurricane Katrina. It took me a bit to warm to this book; the first 100 pages are family history, and there is lots of family (Broom is the youngest of 12). I was a
I kept going because Broom is a really good writer. And I am glad I did, because once Broom centers the story around herself, and around the relationship of her family to the family home, it becomes way more interesting and relatable. She also does a good job describing how there were larger political issues that impacted the family (it took 11 years for her mother to get payment for the home after Katrina); but there were also personal and family issues that impacted how they were in the world. I would recommend this book, and also look forward to reading more from Broom in the future.
Broom's mother, a widow, was for a variety of reasons unable to maintain their home in a normal state of repair. This is one of those odd quirks people and families can have, her mother was very functional and capable in other ways. As a result, the family avoided having anyone else in the house. " By avoiding showing people the place where we lived, we unmoored ourselves. No one did this to us."
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bit confused about the characters (book could have benefited from a character list or family tree in the beginning.). Also, I wondered, to begin with, why I should care about Broom's family story.I kept going because Broom is a really good writer. And I am glad I did, because once Broom centers the story around herself, and around the relationship of her family to the family home, it becomes way more interesting and relatable. She also does a good job describing how there were larger political issues that impacted the family (it took 11 years for her mother to get payment for the home after Katrina); but there were also personal and family issues that impacted how they were in the world. I would recommend this book, and also look forward to reading more from Broom in the future.
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LibraryThing member KarenOdden
The prologue ("Map") makes an engaging opening, setting forth the need for a book that looks beyond the touristy French Quarter but also the difficulties in writing a memoir when family members are still living.
Early on, Broom explains, "On a detailed city map once given to me by Avis Rent a Car,
But following this beginning, I found it difficult to engage with this book for the next few chapters. Broom presents her extended family tree, from her great-grandparents forward, and I found my mind wandering as if I were reading that section of the Bible: "So-and-so begat so-and-so..." Next comes what felt like a history of New Orleans/NO East, and while it was interesting, it didn't feel much like a personal memoir. Then, at last, we return to Sarah/Monique (her family name) and her story. From her trip to college, and grad school at Berkeley, and her jobs at O (Oprah's magazine) and in Burundi to help Alexis Sinduhije, "the Nelson Mandela of East Africa," and as a speechwriter back in New Orleans, and her life in Harlem, and then back to the French Quarter to embark on becoming a full-time writer, we follow her as she pursues her peripatetic life, reflecting on her family and the Yellow House, and learning as she goes. That part of the book was a pleasure.
As with many other memoirs that are rooted in place (the South, Africa, etc.), I appreciate discovering how aspects of that place shape the author's sense of identity and purpose. My one gripe is that I found the language somewhat uneven. At times, it feels poetic and spare and perfect: "Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit on." But other times, I felt it seemed flat to me, most often when I found a series of five or six sentences in a row constructed around "was." Still, this is an ambitious, original memoir, with a view into a world I knew very little about. I'd recommend.
Early on, Broom explains, "On a detailed city map once given to me by Avis Rent a Car,
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the French Quarter has been shaded in light turquoise, magnified in a box at the bottom of the page. New Orleans East [where Broom grew up] is cut off, a point beyond, a blank space on someone's mental map. ... New Orleans East is fifty times the size of the French Quarter, one-fourth of the city's developed surface. Properly mapped, it might swallow the page whole." This map, of course, is a metaphor for the ways NOEast has been marginalized and neglected, both in the popular imagination, and materially, in the lack of good sewage systems and drainage, street lights, funding, concern for neighborhoods when throwing up a highway, and concern for the people after Hurricanes Betsy (1965) and Katrina.But following this beginning, I found it difficult to engage with this book for the next few chapters. Broom presents her extended family tree, from her great-grandparents forward, and I found my mind wandering as if I were reading that section of the Bible: "So-and-so begat so-and-so..." Next comes what felt like a history of New Orleans/NO East, and while it was interesting, it didn't feel much like a personal memoir. Then, at last, we return to Sarah/Monique (her family name) and her story. From her trip to college, and grad school at Berkeley, and her jobs at O (Oprah's magazine) and in Burundi to help Alexis Sinduhije, "the Nelson Mandela of East Africa," and as a speechwriter back in New Orleans, and her life in Harlem, and then back to the French Quarter to embark on becoming a full-time writer, we follow her as she pursues her peripatetic life, reflecting on her family and the Yellow House, and learning as she goes. That part of the book was a pleasure.
As with many other memoirs that are rooted in place (the South, Africa, etc.), I appreciate discovering how aspects of that place shape the author's sense of identity and purpose. My one gripe is that I found the language somewhat uneven. At times, it feels poetic and spare and perfect: "Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit on." But other times, I felt it seemed flat to me, most often when I found a series of five or six sentences in a row constructed around "was." Still, this is an ambitious, original memoir, with a view into a world I knew very little about. I'd recommend.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Sarah Broom grew up in New Orleans, the youngest of twelve children. She never knew her father Simon, who died six months after Sarah was born. The family lived in New Orleans East, on a short street sandwiched between a busy highway and railroad tracks. While they were far from financially secure,
Everything changed when Hurricane Katrina ripped through the city in 2005. By that time, Sarah was twenty-five and living in New York, but most of her family was still in New Orleans. Several family members evacuated to California and Texas. One brother rode out the storm and found himself living on a rooftop for a week before being rescued, The Yellow House did not survive the storm. Not surprisingly, the scope of the tragedy and her family’s long-term displacement took its toll on Sarah.
Who has the rights to the story of a place? Are these rights earned, bought, fought and died for? Or are they given? Are they automatic, like an assumption? Self-renewing? Are these rights a token of citizenship belonging to those who stay in the place or to those who leave and come back to it? Does the act of leaving relinquish one’s rights to the story of a place? Who stays gone? Who can afford to return?
Growing up, the Yellow House had been a source of embarrassment. Sarah and her siblings were actively discouraged from inviting friends to visit; on the rare occasions this occurred, it did not go well. But even as Sarah forged an identity that could never reveal where she lived, the house was still home, a foundation holding up every member of the family. With its loss, Sarah also lost the structural foundation in her life. The Yellow House is the product of Sarah’s efforts to reconstruct her family history, much of which she had not been aware of, to understand the ways in which Katrina impacted each person, and to determine what this all means for her life moving forward.
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they were close-knit. Sarah’s mother Ivory moved heaven and earth to provide for her children, and as the children grew into adults they looked after one another, too. Their home, the Yellow House, was lovingly cared for by Ivory, but it was also riddled with structural issues due to its age, construction, and attempts at remodeling to meet the needs of a growing family.Everything changed when Hurricane Katrina ripped through the city in 2005. By that time, Sarah was twenty-five and living in New York, but most of her family was still in New Orleans. Several family members evacuated to California and Texas. One brother rode out the storm and found himself living on a rooftop for a week before being rescued, The Yellow House did not survive the storm. Not surprisingly, the scope of the tragedy and her family’s long-term displacement took its toll on Sarah.
Who has the rights to the story of a place? Are these rights earned, bought, fought and died for? Or are they given? Are they automatic, like an assumption? Self-renewing? Are these rights a token of citizenship belonging to those who stay in the place or to those who leave and come back to it? Does the act of leaving relinquish one’s rights to the story of a place? Who stays gone? Who can afford to return?
Growing up, the Yellow House had been a source of embarrassment. Sarah and her siblings were actively discouraged from inviting friends to visit; on the rare occasions this occurred, it did not go well. But even as Sarah forged an identity that could never reveal where she lived, the house was still home, a foundation holding up every member of the family. With its loss, Sarah also lost the structural foundation in her life. The Yellow House is the product of Sarah’s efforts to reconstruct her family history, much of which she had not been aware of, to understand the ways in which Katrina impacted each person, and to determine what this all means for her life moving forward.
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LibraryThing member eas7788
Wonderful. A memoir of family and place as well as self. She did an excellent job telling the story of New Orleans East and NOLA as a whole. The critique of the French Quarter toward the end was particularly well done. There is so much love in her writing, so much caring and observation, so little
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judgment. The sections with her mother talking really stood out. Hard to do this book justice when describing it because it is unique. Show Less
LibraryThing member kristykay22
This is a lyrical memoir, or a biographical history, or an exploration of a city through the lens of a family, or an individual view of a landmark natural disaster. Whatever it is, it is truly excellent. Broom tells the story of her New Orleans family, going back to her ancestors, and moving
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forward to the present day. She gives us the story of her city, with a focus on New Orleans East and the streets that tourists never see. She explores her own coming and going, her rushing away and her rushing back. She gives us Katrina, but also everything that happens after. She gives us her twelve brothers and sisters, the father who died when she was an infant, and her beloved mother. Through it all is the Yellow House. The house that her mother bought before she married her father. The house that made it through hurricane Betsy in 1965, to fall and sink and get shined up and repainted, and then to confront Katrina. Broom's love for her family, and particularly the voice of her mother, are a constant through this wandering and wonderful book. Also: there are archives (shout out to the HNOC!). I really can't think of a person who shouldn't read this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member avanders
Based on audio-book.
The author reads her own memoir, and while I would have thought I’d prefer that, with an emotional story like this one, I now understand why some authors have others read their intimate words. Sarah Broom’s voice is lovely and melodic, but of course she would pull back from
Ultimately, this is an impossibly difficult story to tell, which Broom does with aplomb and grace. I am impressed with not only her vulnerability, but that of her entire family in showing the world such a intimate portrait of life before, during, and after Katrina, in East New Orleans and all over the world.
I of course recommend this, with the single caveat that perhaps the audio read isn’t the best read. 4
The author reads her own memoir, and while I would have thought I’d prefer that, with an emotional story like this one, I now understand why some authors have others read their intimate words. Sarah Broom’s voice is lovely and melodic, but of course she would pull back from
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displaying the rawest of emotions conveyed in some of these pages because to display it would be, for her, to actually relive it. I wouldn’t ask that of anyone. But I do think something was a little lost in the audio reading because of that as well. There were moments where I thought about the words she just spoke and knew that if I had read them, they would have actually had greater impact. Ultimately, this is an impossibly difficult story to tell, which Broom does with aplomb and grace. I am impressed with not only her vulnerability, but that of her entire family in showing the world such a intimate portrait of life before, during, and after Katrina, in East New Orleans and all over the world.
I of course recommend this, with the single caveat that perhaps the audio read isn’t the best read. 4
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LibraryThing member ibkennedy
Great family story
LibraryThing member etxgardener
Sarah Broom grew up one of 12 children in a jerryrigged shotgun house in East New Orleans. Broom grows up not knowing she has any possibilities, but thanks to her mother's tenacity, she gets an education, avoids the pitfalls of her down-at-the heels neighborhood, and lands a job with Oprah's
Broom relates how her large family is scattered in all directions, some via car to Mississippi, others via evacuation busses to San Antonio, Houston, and even a nursing home in Tyler.
As a result of this disaster, Broom returns to New Orleans and gets a job doing PR for the exquisitely corrupt Mayor Ray Nagin, and begins to research both her family history and the history of the little yellow house.
Through the stories of her own and her family's lives, Broom manages to tell the larger story of both New Orleans and the southern black diaspora. This book starts off slowly, but stick with it because the last half is wonderful .
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magazine just as Katrina starts twirling towards New Orleans.Broom relates how her large family is scattered in all directions, some via car to Mississippi, others via evacuation busses to San Antonio, Houston, and even a nursing home in Tyler.
As a result of this disaster, Broom returns to New Orleans and gets a job doing PR for the exquisitely corrupt Mayor Ray Nagin, and begins to research both her family history and the history of the little yellow house.
Through the stories of her own and her family's lives, Broom manages to tell the larger story of both New Orleans and the southern black diaspora. This book starts off slowly, but stick with it because the last half is wonderful .
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LibraryThing member Kristelh
I read The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom which is a memoir. Sarah is a black American who lived in East New Orleans and part of the story is about Hurricane Katrina. Ms Broom has had an interesting life, working for O magazine, going to Africa to work in Burundi, then working for politician.
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Mostly it is a 100 year story of her family and the Yellow House where they had lived for awhile in New Orleans, LA. Ms Broom quotes James Baldwin often as well as several other literary references. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheAmpersand
The author of this one is the youngest in a family of eleven children and grew up in a little-known part of New Orleans that has been ignored by both city planners and tourists almost since its founding. The place was pretty desolate: in the shadow of a nearby highway, it featured
The author also proves that she's a pretty able historical researcher, talking us through the history of her family from plantation times onward, picking up what she can about the sort of people whose forgetting sometimes seems inevitable. From one perspective, the book's central mystery might be Broom's own father, Simon Broom, who died suddenly when the author was just six years old. Living, as I do, in a era of media oversaturation, I was surprised that the author was able to locate only six photographs of her father. Both the reader and the author mostly meet him through others' stories. Whether the author's digging through country records, talking to members of the jazz band he used to play in, or describing how New Orleans' development has consistently short-changed most of its own residents, you get a sense of how consistently precarious her family's existence has been. The author was actually working for a magazine in New York City when Katrina hit, but, fittingly enough, she spends a bit of time in Burundi, a place where the coming apocalypse is taken for granted. At the end of the book, the author's big family is dispersed, and the New Orleans she once knew is being increasingly overshadowed by the tourist attractions that have made the city famous, but everyone is still, more or less, still on their feet. And now the baby of the family's gone and written a book that won the National Book Award, and, what's more, absolutely deserves it. This long, complex, and occasionally meandering story is inspiring in more ways than one. In rescuing what was almost certain to be erased by time, this book does one of the things that all good writing is supposed to do. "The Yellow House" is well worth your time.
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worse-than-mediocre schools and a frightening amount of street crime. The house from which the book takes its name was also a pretty precarious affair, a structure than housed a whole lot of people that seemed to start sinking into the Louisiana swamp just about as soon as it was built. As tourism exploded in the French Quarter, the author's neighborhood slowly turned into an industrial nowhere, and that was before Katrina hit. This is a book about surviving in the face of long odds. The house referred to in the title is both a home in the conventional sense -- the author expresses real affection for it -- and an object lesson about how to carve out your own space in a time and place that seem to be less and less concerned about the survival of the people in it. I've said this about a lot of midlife memoirs, but it's a small wonder that this book exists, but I'm glad that it does. The author also proves that she's a pretty able historical researcher, talking us through the history of her family from plantation times onward, picking up what she can about the sort of people whose forgetting sometimes seems inevitable. From one perspective, the book's central mystery might be Broom's own father, Simon Broom, who died suddenly when the author was just six years old. Living, as I do, in a era of media oversaturation, I was surprised that the author was able to locate only six photographs of her father. Both the reader and the author mostly meet him through others' stories. Whether the author's digging through country records, talking to members of the jazz band he used to play in, or describing how New Orleans' development has consistently short-changed most of its own residents, you get a sense of how consistently precarious her family's existence has been. The author was actually working for a magazine in New York City when Katrina hit, but, fittingly enough, she spends a bit of time in Burundi, a place where the coming apocalypse is taken for granted. At the end of the book, the author's big family is dispersed, and the New Orleans she once knew is being increasingly overshadowed by the tourist attractions that have made the city famous, but everyone is still, more or less, still on their feet. And now the baby of the family's gone and written a book that won the National Book Award, and, what's more, absolutely deserves it. This long, complex, and occasionally meandering story is inspiring in more ways than one. In rescuing what was almost certain to be erased by time, this book does one of the things that all good writing is supposed to do. "The Yellow House" is well worth your time.
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Subjects
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Nonfiction — 2019)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Winner — 2019)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Nonfiction — 2020)
ALA Notable Book (Nonfiction — 2020)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Nonfiction — 2020)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nominee — Nonfiction — 2020)
NPR: Books We Love (2019)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2019)
Notable Books List (Nonfiction — 2020)
Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (Nonfiction — 2019)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2019)