The Yellow House Summary and Analysis

Summary: Introduction and Movement I [Chapter I: Amelia “Lolo” – Chapter IV: Simon Broom]

Sarah Broom begins her memoir by asking readers to visualize looking down on New Orleans, like a map, from above. From so far off, you would not see her brother Carl sitting on the empty lot that once held their family home, the Yellow House. She describes the route a driver would take from downtown to her home, describing the roads and familiar buildings along the way, recalling significant events in her life that occurred at various locations. Broom begins her memoir with a family history because, as she says, “my beginning precedes me.”

Her grandmother Amelia, called Lolo, was born on a plantation around 1916 to Roseanna Perry and John Gant. No one knows what became of Roseanna, but it seems none of her five children lived with her long, and Lolo ended up in the home of Sarah McCutcheon, a woman she would call her mother. Sarah loved beautiful things and taught Lolo to dress well, appreciate a nice home, and cook skillfully. Lolo was only educated through fifth grade and worked as a house cleaner. She had three children with a married man named Lionel Soule.

Lolo’s children, Joseph, Elaine, and Ivory Mae, were close siblings who learned from their mother how to keep a clean house and tidy appearance. For a time, Lolo left her children with her sister and lived in Chicago. She returned to them, however, perhaps reminded of her own unstable childhood. Lolo studied at night to become a nurse. All three of her children had light complexions, for which the girls were chosen to star in school plays in their segregated school. Like many, they internalized some racist attitudes about skin color, disdaining those who were darker. The three were the only Black students not to attend an annual ceremony honoring the white slave owner and patron of Louisiana schools John McDonough.

Ivory Mae and her neighbor Webb were childhood friends. Although they were not romantically tied, Ivory Mae became pregnant the summer of her junior year of high school. The two married, and after their first son was born, a change in policy meant Ivory Mae was not allowed to return to school. Webb enlisted when Ivory Mae was pregnant for a second time. Tragically, during her third pregnancy, Webb was killed on base, hit from behind by a car. Rumors spread about the paternity of Ivory Mae’s third child.

Simon Broom was a tall, well-spoken man who worked on his family’s farm before serving in the Navy during WWII. He was first married to Carrie Howard, with whom he had three children. While they were separated, he met Ivory Mae, who was 19 years younger. The two were married in 1964 after Carrie’s death in 1963. They formed a blended family.

Analysis: Introduction and Movement I [Chapter I: Amelia “Lolo” – Chapter IV: Simon Broom]

The Yellow House goes beyond the bounds of a standard memoir to include elements of genealogy, ethnography, reporting, and social commentary. Sarah Broom set out to write more than a memoir from the beginning. She wanted to explore her own life and her experiences of the significant event of Hurricane Katrina, the types of factual accounts found in memoirs, but she sought to understand the event, as she will explain later, in a “global context.” As Emma Sarappo explained in a review in The Atlantic, “Broom used her family’s story to help make sense of Hurricane Katrina’s effects on New Orleans” by adding to her own story with “layered timelines of the city and country’s past on top.”

In order to do this, she begins by exploring over 100 years of her family history, going back to her great-grandparents. Broom has an ethnographic interest in the tangible, cultural details of their lives, like how they cooked, what they wore, and how they danced. Later in the book, she uses her skills as a journalist to research and report on the history of the city and how her neighborhood came to be. She also seeks to understand the political and civic decisions that contributed to the tragedy her family and many others faced in the wake of Katrina.

The author taps into her childhood talent for recording conversations verbatim, as readers will learn in coming chapters, and those she acquires as a journalist to give a voice to the residents of New Orleans East through the words of her family members and others. Broom includes dialogue that brings the people of the memoir to life. Set apart in italics, the dialect of her family is a contrast to the professional, lyrical prose of the author yet no less powerful. Including the voices of those most impacted by the tragedy of Katrina is a deliberate choice by the author to highlight the experience of those whose plight has been discounted for so long.