THE Yellow House WINNER OF NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir of home and family, from a stunning new talent, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans. Praise for The Yellow House'[An] extraordinary, engrossing debut . . . kinetic and omnivorous . . . Part oral history, part urban history, part celebration of a bygone way of life, The Yellow House is a full indictment of the greed, discrimination, indifference and poor city planning that led her family's home to be wiped off the map. It is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future of the city of New Orleans, and of America writ large' Angela Flournoy, New York Times Book Review'Where are you from? The Yellow House is Broom's luminous, literary answer to that appeal . . . Readers may hear echoes of James Baldwin in the relentlessness of her inquiry, and in the sinewy cadences of her sentences . . . Pared down to its studs, The Yellow House is a love story. It is a declaration of unconditional devotion and commitment to place. Broom also pays homage to the relationships we protect, the ones we yearn for and circle back to; the ones that hold us and don't give up on us, that are our living and breathing foundation' Lynell George, Los Angeles Times'A memoir - but also so much more. The New Orleans native has written a hybrid of the most exquisite kind, part family history, part archaeological dig, part self-exegesis' Petula Dvorak, Washington Post'[This] gorgeous debut, The Yellow House, reads as elegy and prayer' Maureen Corrigan, NPR'Gorgeously written, intimate and wise, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House is an astonishing memoir of family, love, and survival. It's also a history of New Orleans unlike any we've seen before, one that should be required reading' Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up'Every few years, a book comes along that teaches readers of memoir how to read and writers of memoir how to write . . . the most humanely massive intervention I've read in 21st century memoir writing' Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy'Masterful' Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women'The Yellow House is a masterpiece, period . . . Broom shows what literary nonfiction - and what books - can yet do and be. I already consider her to be one of America's most important and influential writers' Heidi Julavits, author of The Folded Clock A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION'A major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade' New York Times Book ReviewIn 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 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. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority and power.