The Yellow House

The Yellow House, winner of the National Book Award for Best Nonfiction, is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom about a person, a place, and a particular house (that of the title). At it essence, it's a story about New Orleans, not the part that tourists go to. "There are no guided tours to this part of the city, except for the disaster bus tours that became an industry after Hurricane Katrina, carting visitors around, pointing out the great destruction of neighborhoods that were never known or set foot in before the Water, except by their residents."

She is referring to East New Orleans, a kind of no-man's land, sort of like the way Gertrude Stein referred to Oakland: "There's no there there." Her mother, Ivory Mae, bought a shotgun house there in 1961, and lived there, along with her twelve children (Broom was the youngest) until it was knocked down after Katrina (or, as Broom calls it, the Water). Even after it was knocked out, one of her brothers couldn't pry himself away, hanging out there and cutting the grass.

The Yellow House is sprawling. It's a bit difficult to keep track of all of Broom's siblings. She takes us back to when her mother was a teen, marrying her first husband, who died under mysterious circumstances while in the Army. Then she married Simon Broom, who died when Sarah was just six months old. Twelve children would live in that house, and it serves as a character of this narrative.

Broom would leave New Orleans for New York City and then a stint in Africa, but she felt a pull to return. For a while she worked in Mayor Ray Nagin's office, and took an apartment in the French Quarter. For those who like to read about The Big Easy, this is an essential book. I've never been there, but I'm drawn to stories about it, whether it's the show Treme or any number of films set there.

Of course, that Broom and her family are African American is an important part of the story. Broom writes, "Lolo (her grandmother) always told us we could be whatever we wanted to be. When we were growing up, we never thought of white people as superior to us. We always thought we were equal to them or better."

And, as one might expect, Katrina plays a huge role in the story. Broom was not living there when it happened, but her brother Carl was one of those who had to take to a roof and wait for rescue. And it's effect on the city was huge. Broom cites some statistics, such as that New Orleans' population hit it's highest in 1960, or that before the storm, it had the highest percentage of population of people that had been born there--people didn't tend to leave. But afterward thousands left and never came back, including most of her family.

I enjoyed the book, but found it to wander a little bit, and at times lose focus. The book alternates between being Broom's life story and a monograph on the city--the city is part of her story, but not all of it. When she is writing about New Orleans is when the book is at its strongest: "The mythology of New Orleans—that it is always the place for a good time; that its citizens are the happiest people alive, willing to smile, dance, cook, and entertain for you; that it is a progressive city open to whimsy and change—can sometimes suffocate the people who live and suffer under the place’s burden, burying them within layers and layers of signifiers, making it impossible to truly get at what is dysfunctional about the city."