'The Yellow House' Connects Place, Memory And Self-Knowledge
Sarah Broom's childhood house is the fulcrum for her memoir about her large and complex family. But perhaps more important, it stands in for the countless ways America has failed African Americans.
by Martha Anne Toll
Aug 13, 2019
4 minutes
Sarah M. Broom's gorgeous debut, The Yellow House, reads as elegy and prayer.
The titular house is the fulcrum for Broom's memoir about her large and complex family. Perhaps more important, it stands in for the countless ways America has failed and continues to fail African Americans.
Broom is the youngest of her mother Ivory Mae's 12 children. Widowed at age 19, Ivory Mae invested her savings in a shotgun house — the yellow one — in East New Orleans. Until Texas millionaires moved in with big development plans and even bigger hype, no one knew quite what to call this
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