Sarah M. Broom

A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.

The Yellow House

Jessie Farris

mic shulman

Cindy

The scope of The Yellow House is absolutely staggering: Broom weaves stories of her own life, which is inextricable from the story of her family, which is inextricable from the story of the yellow house in which she grew up, which is inextricable from the story of New Orleans. It's ambitious to attempt to braid these all together into one narrative, and while Broom touches upon all of these stories, the novel felt dry and lacking in warmth that I would have wanted from a memoir. It didn't feel very focused, and it was admittedly difficult to stay engaged with the book.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION 'A major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade' New York Times Book Review 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 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.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

Jan Talkington

Well written and very honest account of life in New Orleans East. New Orleans is not romanticized but is laid bare to reality. The house represents so much about success and struggles not only for the house, but for the Broom family, neighbors and New Orleans itself. Interesting story.

Francine Corry

Leslie Campisi

Emily Campbell

Gelaine Trinidad

Andrew Reeves

Megan Parrott

Olivia

savannah eden

Lizelle G

Kyle Curry

Landon Alder

Zoey Mikalatos

Satya Nelms

Alisha 

Jocelyn Chuang

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East. 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.

The Yellow House

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