The Yellow House by Sarah Broom
Summary
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah's birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae's thirteenth and most unruly child.
A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's 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. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.
Book Setting: New Orleans, LA
The Yellow House: Family home, now a vacant lot.
NASA Michoud Assembly Facility: Simon worked here, rocket boosters were built for the Apollo space mission.
Court of Sister Restaurant: Lynette's first job in the French Quarter.
K-Pauls Restaurant: Michael worked as a chef.
CC’s Coffee Shop: Sarah’s summer barista job in the French Quarter.
Jefferson Davis Elementary School: Renamed Ernest “Dutch” Morial and now KIPP Morial, Sarah and siblings attended school here.
Livingston Middle School: After irreparable damage from Katrina, the building has been replaced with a new school.
Word of Faith Academy: High school graduation for Sarah.
Dillard University: Ivory Mae earns her certificate “Success is Earned”.
Louisiana Technical College: Ivory Mae got a commercial sewing license.
Victory Fellowship Church: Main outing for the family at a new mega church.
Mount Pilgrim Church: Davis & Broom boys would march to church singing military cadences.
Divine Mission of God: Lolo attended, church on one side, house on the other.
Schwegmann’s Supermarket: Dressing up for Friday “holiday” to come here.
Natal's Supermarket: Corner grocery store where Sarah would buy “liver cheese” for Ivory Mae.
Rubenstein Brothers: Joseph bought tailor made slacks.
Krauss Department Store: Now condominiums, Ivory Mae would shop for home goods.
Chef Menteur Highway: Karen and Carl walking to school when Karen was hit and dragged by a car.
Old Gentilly Road: On the way to the short end of Wilson.
Wilson Avenue: Leading the way to 4121, the Yellow House.
Congress Inn: The Beatles stayed in 1964, Beatlemania existed but Wilson a few miles away barely knew it.
Audubon Zoo: Lolo would frequent the zoo and became obsessed with elephants and name her daughter Ivory Mae.
Reviews
"[A] forceful, rolling and many-chambered new memoir.... [Broom's] memoir isn't just a Katrina story -- it has a lot more on its mind. But the storm and the way it scattered her large family across America give this book both its grease and its gravitas.... This book is dense with characters and stories. It's a big, simmering pot that comes to a boil at the right times.... This is a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade. There are a lot of complicated emotions coursing through its veins. It throws the image of an exceptional American city into dark relief."
--New York Times
"Broom's book is a memoir -- but also so much more. The New Orleans native has written a hybrid of the most exquisite kind, part family history, part archaeological dig, part self-exegesis. It all comes back to the house of the title, a "New Orleans East" shotgun dwelling that has given hope, heartbreak, shelter and transformation to decades of Broom's family. And Broom has used it to inspire something new."'
--Washington Post
"A remarkable journey...Her tale is one of loss, love, and resilience."
--Robin Roberts, Good Morning America