The Yellow House

By: Sarah M. Broom

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times Best Seller
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 12 children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah’s birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae’s 13th 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.

Copyright 2019 by Sarah M. Broom. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. Kei Miller, excerpt from The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet Press Ltd); Peter Turchi, excerpt from Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (Trinity University Press); excerpt from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, copyright 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France, translation copyright 1964 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved; Tracy K. Smith, excerpt from “Ash” from Wade in the Water. Originally from the New Yorker (November 23, 2015). Copyright 2015, 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, graywolfpress.org; LeAlan Jones, Public Domain; Yance Ford, excerpt from the film Strong Island; John Milton, excerpt from Paradise Lost. Public Domain; Unified New Orleans Plan, Public Domain; Lil Wayne, excerpt from AllHipHop.com interview in early 2006; Adrienne Rich, the lines from “Diving into the Wreck”. Copyright 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from Collected Poems: 1950-2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc; Joan Didion, excerpt from “In the Islands” from The White Album by Joan Didion. Copyright 1979 by Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Sam Hamill, excerpt from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings (Shambhala Classics).

©2019 by Sarah M. Broom. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Stick with it

This was a slow start and I considered giving up, but in the end, I was glad I kept going with it. It's VERY well written, which matters to me, and in the end - it causes the listener some introspection. The narrator is one of my very favorites.

uneven mix of stories

The memoir, when focused on the author and her family story is interesting and compelling. But when the author drifts too long into the history and minutiae of some locations it becomes a dry textbook. And her distance/displacement from her personal emotions leaves me dissatisfied. Perhaps that displacement is the point of the story.

Universal story

The; Yellow House was a San Francisco Victorian i n my story. I'm not black, either,or 6 ft tall; but we had almost duplicate lives. The house the various family & extended family, returning again & again, to finding myself there again, It really is a coming-of-age novel; for every woman.

Yellow is the color of clarity.

“Water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was”. Toni Morrison.

“Begin as you want to end”. Ivory Mae Broom.

Sarah M. Broom penned a very informative memoir that shed light on many themes – family / community cohesiveness, belonging, love, loss, race and discrimination. Sarah and her family are from New Orleans East, a city bifurcated between the Mississippi River and the Industrial Canal. The story takes place predominantly in New Orleans East. She is the last of twelve children. In her memoir, the house is considered to be the unruly thirteenth child. Although the yellow house was destroyed during the hurricane, it still lives on through her families lives. New Orleans is known for its rich history and culture. I really enjoyed the historical aspects in relation to slavery and how she gave her family a voice to tell their story as well. The author educates us to those places that were purposely omitted then washed away by Hurricane Katrina. Katrina uprooted and displaced families within the community. These families that belonged to and identified with New Orleans East, showed up boldly in their presence demanding to be recognized. Her story revealed the truth about family and a community that was displaced before, during and after hurricane Katrina. The author showed how New Orleans East was displaced on a map, a city that map makers and politicians alike behaved as though it was a non-entity. Sarah is successful in putting New Orleans on the map of our hearts and minds, going as far back 100 years into her family’s history. Sarah refers to Hurricane Katrina as the water.

Water, is a necessity in life. The ocean, a beautiful vast body of water. It can be so serene and a place to go to meditate – disconnect to reconnect. She – the water, this bold woman is strong and can be deadly. Water can and will reclaim at will. Washing away any and everything in her path.

great NOLA and where you come from read

great book about where you come from and how it affects you. and if where you come from isn't on the map, what does that mean for you?

Great book, okay performance

New Orleans plays a prominent role in this book and I was disappointed that Bahni Turpin, who has a beautiful, clear voice, did not have/use the local pronunciations. This is ultimately a story of identity as it relates to place, and all places have their own languages, but particularly Louisiana and even more so New Orleans. I prefer author reads whenever that’s possible, but at minimum would hope producers, voice artists want to be true to the subject matter at hand. That said, the Louisiana-New Orleans language is tough, and sometimes illogical. But, it’s central to this particular story.

Bonnie Turpin brings Brooms’ tale to life.

The complexity of family, the duality of New Orleans, the tragedy of the years post-Katrina before New Orleans East and 9 th ward residents got any help from Road Home funds, the characters in Brooms family inhabit a tale of place and belonging that Turpin performance brings to life.

LOVE this! Great for my soul

As a central Louisiana native all her people are so familiar... this was great for my soul.

Beautifully written story of family abd what esperares and connects us all

I don’t want to spoil it by saying too much. This is a story well worth your time. I amazed by the authors voice in the way that she gathers the reader in so we feel her heart abd her pain, as a friend would.

honest and thoughtful

it took a little bit for me to get started, but by about 1/3 I was thoroughly engrossed. her writing is poetic, yet straight forward. an interesting take on a memoir - who we are, what we belong to and how our family and place shapes us