The Yellow House Discussion Questions

How is birth order important in Sarah’s journey in The Yellow House?

As the youngest of 12 children in the Broom family, Sarah is the “babiest.” As such, she had “eleven older points of view, eleven disparate rallying cries, eleven demanding pay-attention-to-me voices” to contend with. She finds as the youngest child that “developing your own [voice] becomes a matter of survival.” Broom sets out to do even more than add her own voice to the “variations of the communal story” belonging to her large family. Writing a memoir, in effect a family history as well, she is “upending the natural order of things” by refusing to simply accept the version of events she has been told.

It is no wonder Broom sees taking on the role of family storyteller as a transgression because of her position at the bottom of the family. She has been told as the baby of the family, “last and smallest,” she didn’t need to understand things like why she didn’t have a father. No one can even recall her father’s reaction to news of her mother’s pregnancy with her. Perhaps it is for this very reason that she seeks understanding and sets out to research not only her family history but the larger context of what happened to them and their community after Katrina.

What does The Yellow House demonstrate about the enduring impact of catastrophe?

The most visible effects of catastrophes like Katrina are what Broom describes in media coverage: homes underwater, people in distress, stranded survivors on roofs, and talking heads making promises. However, the enduring impact of catastrophe goes beyond physical damage and loss of property and lives. Years after Katrina, New Orleans East has not been fully rebuilt. Streets are empty, and city services have not been fully restored. There are so few streetlights that coyotes roam where kids once played. Crime soars. Many residents will never return. The site of the catastrophe becomes a curiosity for tourists in buses to gawk at through the window. A loss of hope can lead to a lack of investment, meaning communities are permanently altered.

Catastrophe fractures families and leads to divestment of personal wealth for the most disadvantaged. For families like the Brooms, the catastrophe also changes their family history. The home that they grew up in is gone, and the place they gathered and returned to is a bare piece of land. They no longer live close to one another. Because of evacuation and in order to find work, they have been scattered across the country. Instead of equity, Ivory Mae is no longer a homeowner, receiving a small sum that would not cover costs to rebuild. They choose to auction off the only thing that remains: the lot. They—and so many in their community—are divested of all they had earned.

How is the idea of perspective at play in The Yellow House?

Author Sarah Broom tells the story of the Yellow House from a variety of perspectives. This is necessary in part because much of the story takes place “in the world before me,” as she says. She includes the perspective of oral family history to record the lives of those who came before her. This includes perspectives of her parents and siblings to describe the Yellow House in its best years, before her earliest memories. She also relies on the perspective of her siblings and mother to describe Katrina after the storm because she wasn’t there. Their harrowing firsthand perspectives lend drama to the account. The author employs frequent, strategic shifts in perspective in this section of the memoir to create suspense.

Broom makes important points by contrasting two or more perspectives. For example, coming from New York, Broom is relatively comfortable living in the French Quarter, but she includes Ivory Mae’s dialogue to show the perspective of a native to New Orleans East. Wondering at the daily street cleaning, coming from a place where houses have been torn down and trash is piling up, Ivory Mae exclaims, “It’s like a whole other world.” Broom also contrasts her perspective of urgency and focus on understanding what has contributed to the disaster to a city worker who tells her, “We don’t have the liberty of going around and examining things the way we think makes sense.” Finally, she contrasts the perspective of those looking at the Yellow House and New Orleans East from afar, from above, or from outside with those who live within it. There is so much that people outside miss seeing. There is so much that those within wish they could avoid seeing.

How does the author use the term “the Water” in telling the story of The Yellow House?

The author refers to Hurricane Katrina as “the Water” in The Yellow House. Capitalizing the name indicates a significant event everyone is so familiar with that it needs only one term and no explanation, like “Vietnam” or “9/11.”

One way Sarah uses “the Water” is as a marker in time. Other events are situated as occurring “before the Water” or “after the Water.” Another way the author uses the phrase is as a proper name for a deadly force. Her cousin Troy “had proclaimed how he would die not from the Water but from [flying].” Carl grew ill and “blamed his physical calamities on the Water.” In contrast, downtown New Orleans is “the only area spared the Water.”

A final way the author uses the single, capitalized form “the Water” is to personify the event, the force. The Water is anthropomorphized. As they stand next to their ruined house, the Broom siblings observe the huge gap between the old and new portions of the house, a “new entrance, a fourth door designed by the Water.” In capitalizing the phrase and using it in these ways, the author indicates the lasting significance of the hurricane and its aftermath.

In The Yellow House, how is family history kept in Sarah’s family?

Sarah’s family history, as with many families, is largely maintained through an oral tradition. Stories are told and passed down. There were, of course, some documents to establish marriages, births, and the like, but aside from that, her history is “the story as the generations tell it.” The Broom family’s history includes each sibling’s version: “all variations of the communal story.”

Oral tradition is based on memory, which can be subjective. Sarah’s grandmother Lolo recounted the year of her birth as 1916, although this differs from official records. She thought, “fixed details were important to stories . . . even if you couldn’t prove them.” Oral history is also only a partial history. There are some parts of it people cannot or don’t want to remember. Sarah claims Ivory Mae “closes down passageways to memory when something doesn’t make sense or when the thing or person no longer exists.” No one in the family seems to recall what her father’s reaction was to news of her mother’s pregnancy with her. Her brother Simon Jr. explains that “there is a lot we have agreed subconsciously that we don’t want to know.”

Sarah is not content for her family history to remain only an oral tradition. Her family history includes photographs and is now encapsulated in her written account. In addition, the Broom family “art director of family memory,” Lynette, has composed scrapbooks of images. Sarah’s memoir serves as an enduring, written family history as well as a history of her wider community in many ways.