Sarah M. Broom’s National Book ward-winning debut memoir is many things at once. It is not only a personal memoir, but also a comprehensive family history, a history of the city of New Orleans, a mediation on natural disaster, and an exploration of America’s divestment from its black communities. Broom begins the story with her mother, first widowed at the age of 19, then widowed once again years later, weeks after the birth of Sarah, her twelfth child. Broom crafts her memoir around the house where her mother raised her and her eleven siblings: a yellow house by Chef Menteur highway, in the economically devastated New Orleans East neighborhood. The house is in a constant state of deterioration, a painful fact for Ivory Mae (Broom’s mother) who had always been and put-together and refined woman, making it all the more painful that she was living in a home she described as “not all that comfortable for other people.”
Broom carefully maps her family history onto the history of her neighborhood and the history of New Orleans itself. New Orleans East was originally conceived as a profitable land development scheme, before devolving into a neglected community devoid of resources. New Orleans East is a reminder of all the promises not kept, all the opportunities promised to families like Sarah’s, who ended up being tossed to the wayside. The economic crisis comes to a head in New Orleans East with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that left thousands homeless, and forced many New Orleans residents, like Broom’s siblings, to flee to states like Texas or California. Broom was herself away during Katrina, which she refers to as “the Water”, living in Harlem and working for O Magazine at the time, and her absence from the city during its darkest hour becomes an immense burden to her. Aside from the immediate horror of waiting to hear if her family members where able to make it out of the wreckage alive, Broom experiences the immense trauma of city bureaucracy failing her community, seizing and destroying the yellow house, and refusing aid to people and communities most in need. In an interview with The Atlantic, Broom said, “When we boil Katrina down to a weather event, we really miss the point, It’s so crucially important for me to put Katrina in context, to situate it as one in a long line of things that are literally baked into the soil of this place.”
In other words, the arrival of Katrina was not the beginning of the issues plaguing Broom’s family or community, but rather a disaster that further exposed the ways in which this country has neglected its black population and propped up institutions with profit as their only goal. As Broom travels off to college, to grad school, then Harlem for work, and eventually even Burundi for service, she searches for answers to questions surrounding her identity, and despite her efforts to turn away from the city that reminds her of the struggles of her family and the ugliness of the yellow house, she is always directed back to New Orleans. Her identity is so clearly intertwined with New Orleans, and despite the traumas of her community, she is always looking for a way home. Eventually taking a position with the Mayor Nagin’s communication department in the City of New Orleans office, she gets a closer view of the ways in which local and federal government have failed her community, allowed the wealth divide to increase within the city, and pushed less privileged residents to the fringes of the city and the fringes of their memory. For example, despite her position at the mayor’s office, Broom is unable to get her mother’s paperwork through the appropriate legal channels so that she can collect the money owed to her for the destruction of the yellow house.
When Broom quits her job for the City of New Orleans and begin researching her book, she puts together the pieces of her family history through interviews with her siblings and mother, comprehensive research on city zoning laws, and the history of the city of New Orleans. She has created together a history/memoir that transcends genre conventions, weaving together the heartbreaking stories of her beloved family members and the economic and political climate that was in many ways responsible for their traumas. In her search for herself and her home, Broom has written an unforgettable and staggeringly beautiful collective history, one that proves the importance of memory and strong reportage. A singular achievement and a simply beautiful piece of writing.