| Part Of National Book Festival

The Yellow House is a nonfiction memoir published in 2019 by the American author Sarah M. In a narrative centered around her childhood home, “The Yellow House,” Broom chronicles the history of New Orleans through three generations of her family. The house, which she only knew to be ‘the yellow house’ on account of its yellow cladding, was a shotgun house that cost $3500, located at the ‘short’ end of Wilson Avenue, with a trailer park across the road and a scattering of houses along the street. It no longer stands. Sarah Broom’s brother Carl, the seventh of twelve, occupies the space—keeps the space—where the Yellow House sat long after it’s gone. She describes this occupation (p. 3): “Sometimes you can find Carl alone on our lot, poised on an ice chest, searching the view, as if for a sign, as if for a wonder.”.

Sarah Broom discussed her National Book Award-winning memoir, The Yellow House. This program was part of the 20th annual National Book Festival, a virtual event hosted by the Library of Congress.

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*This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

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Yellow House Sarah Broom

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If you hope to immerse yourself in our one-hour conversation with Sarah Broom but only have a moment to spare, please sample the first two minutes.

Ode to Ivory Mae

During those first two minutes with Sarah Broom, winner of the 2019 National Book Award for her memoir, The Yellow House – before we even get to our conversation – you will hear an ode to her mother, Ivory Mae, that will take your breath away.

And if that Ode to Ivory Mae makes you want to know more about what exactly she did with Sarah, the youngest of 12 children, to create Sarah’s unusual gift for the written – and spoken – word-- then take just another minute to listen to the following short exchange.

Reading Proverbs Out Loud(77 seconds)

And then, to understand more about Sarah Broom’s obsessive attention to detail and her ability to identify the most memorable, granular details from her subjects, spend a minute watching the following excerpt on how, as a child, Sarah came to be known as “The Recorder.”

“The Recorder” (48 seconds)

And then – well by then – you might as well accept that watching our full conversation with Sarah Broom may be a better way to spend the next hour than whatever you had been planning to do before.

National Book Award The Yellow House Sarah Broom

We hope you enjoy our conversation with an author who, with the help of multiple generations of her family, has put a neglected area, of a legendary American city, on the map.

Sarah M Broom

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