Book Summary

1. The Yellow House Sarah Broom Reviews
2. The Yellow House Sarah Broom Review
3. The Yellow House Sarah Broom Review

The Yellow House Sarah Broom Reviews

A transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

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.

Broom’s memoir, “The Yellow House,” won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Broom accepted the award at the annual ceremony with a moving speech. She thanked her mother. The newly drained swampland that became New Orleans East touted a promising future when Sarah M. Broom’s mother bought their family’s shotgun house in 1961. “The Yellow House” became home to the family’s 12 children, as well as the most unruly child and symbol through which Broom viewed herself. NYT Best Seller Writer Sarah M. Broom, Author of The Yellow House.

The Yellow House is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It is Broom's first book and it was published on August 13, 2019 by Grove Press.^[2]The Yellow House chronicles Broom's family (mapping back approximately 100 years), her life growing up in New Orleans East, and the eventual demise of her beloved childhood home after Hurricane Katrina. Broom also focuses on the aftermath of Katrina and how the disaster altered her family and her neighborhood. At its core, the book examines race, class, politics, family, trauma, and inequality in New Orleans and America. The Yellow House won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Publication[edit]

The Yellow House was published by Grove Press on August 13, 2019,^[2] following the publication of an early excerpt in the New Yorker in 2015.^[3] The book debuted at number 11 on the Hardcover Nonfiction best sellers list for the September 1, 2019, edition of The New York Times.^[4]

Reception[edit]

The Yellow House Sarah Broom Review

In a pre-publication review, Dwight Garner of the New York Times wrote, 'This is a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade.'^[5] In the New York Times Book Review, Angela Flournoy called it “an instantly essential text.”^[6] The Star Tribune opined that Broom's book had “essentially told the story of black America in one fell swoop.”^[7] Other publications to declare the book's importance included Publishers Weekly.^[8] and Kirkus Reviews^[9] Quoting the book itself, Kirkus Reviews opined that The Yellow House reflected the author's attempt 'to reckon with 'the psychic cost of defining oneself by the place where you are from,' adding that 'Broom's lyrical style celebrates her family bonds, but a righteous fury runs throughout the narrative at New Orleans' injustices, from the foundation on up.'^[9]

In November 2019, The Yellow House won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.^{[10][11][12][13][14]} The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the New York Times Book Review^[15] and the Washington Post.^[16]The Yellow House won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book from the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Awards.^[17]

References[edit]

1. ^Sarah M. Broom (August 13, 2019). The Yellow House: A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner). Grove Atlantic. p. 1. ISBN978-0-8021-4654-0.
2. ^ ^ab'The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom'. Grove Atlantic. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
3. ^Broom, Sarah M. (August 17, 2015). 'The Yellow House'. The New Yorker. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
4. ^'Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers'. The New York Times. September 1, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
5. ^Garner, Dwight (August 5, 2019). ''The Yellow House' Is a Major Memoir About a Large Family and Its Beloved Home'. The New York Times. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
6. ^Flournoy, Angela (August 9, 2019). 'After Hurricane Katrina, How Do You Return Home When Home No Longer Exists?'. The New York Times Book Review. The New York Times. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
7. ^Gibney, Shannon (August 9, 2019). 'Review: 'The Yellow House,' by Sarah Broom'. Star Tribune. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
8. ^'Nonfiction Book Review: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom'. Publishers Weekly. April 26, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
9. ^ ^ab'The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom'. Kirkus Reviews. April 23, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
10. ^'National Book Awards 2019'. National Book Foundation. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
11. ^Italie, Hillel (November 20, 2019). 'Susan Choi, Sarah M. Broom win National Book Awards'. Associated Press. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
12. ^Malone Kircher, Madison (November 21, 2019). 'Sarah M. Broom's National Book Award Speech Will Make You Want to Call Your Mom'. Vulture. New York. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
13. ^'New Orleans author Sarah Broom wins National Book Award for memoir 'The Yellow House''. NOLA.com. November 21, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
14. ^Wappler, Margaret (November 20, 2019). 'Susan Choi and Sarah M. Broom win National Book Awards'. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 23, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
15. ^'The 10 Best Books of 2019'. The New York Times. November 22, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
16. ^'Best Books of 2019'. The Washington Post. November 21, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2019.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
17. ^https://www.bookcritics.org/2020/01/11/announcing-the-finalists-for-the-2019-nbcc-awards/

The Yellow House Sarah Broom Review