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, …
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.
Review of 'The Yellow House: A Memoir' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Meh. Felt snookered into reading this. It's about a woman's family in New Orleans. Or it's about the woman. Or it's about New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. I knew all about that before and found nothing new about it here, and the woman isn't famous or lived an interesting enough life to make a 372-page book about, nor is her family. There are long passages that read like the begatting sections of the Old Testament. If anyone ever asks me what I thought of this book, I'd say, "I read it."
Review of 'The Yellow House: A Memoir' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
This memoir didn't hold my interest as much as I hoped it would, but it was very well written (beautifully so in places). Favorite quote about New Orleans: "To some, the city's delights mattered more than its people."
This memoir didn't hold my interest as much as I hoped it would, but it was very well written (beautifully so in places). Favorite quote about New Orleans: "To some, the city's delights mattered more than its people."
Review of 'The Yellow House: A Memoir' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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 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 …
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 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.
Review of 'The Yellow House: A Memoir' on 'LibraryThing'
4 stars
The things we have forgotten are housed. Our soul is an abode and by remembering houses and rooms, we learn to abide within ourselves.
âGaston Bachelard
This author is a force to be reckoned with. By tapping the readerâs mind rather than ham-fistedly trying to make points, Broom allows for a 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.
âThere is a lot we have subconsciously agreed that we donât want to know,â he tells me. When he asks about …
The things we have forgotten are housed. Our soul is an abode and by remembering houses and rooms, we learn to abide within ourselves.
âGaston Bachelard
This author is a force to be reckoned with. By tapping the readerâs mind rather than ham-fistedly trying to make points, Broom allows for a 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.
âThere is a lot we have subconsciously agreed that we donât want to know,â he tells me. When he asks about my project, I am imprecise, lofty, saying I am writing about âarchitecture and belonging and space.â âIt is a problem when you are talking too much,â 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 couldnât 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 âchild protection servicesâ 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 Carlâs 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 belovedsâMichael, 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.
