The Yellow House

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Map-Movement 1, Chapter 3

Movement 1, Chapters 4-7

Movement 2, Chapters 1-5

Movement 2, Chapters 6-10

Movement 3, Chapters 1-4

Movement 3, Chapters 5-8

Movement 4, Chapters 1-5

Movement 4, Chapter 6-After

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Movement 4, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Movement 4: “Do You Know What It Means? Investigations”

Movement 4, Chapter 1 Summary: “Sojourner”

Broom returns to New Orleans in the winter of 2011, six years after Katrina. This is her second attempt to start a life there. After leaving in 2008, she returns to the same Harlem apartment that she left when she went to Burundi. In between these two stints in New Orleans, Broom fell in love with a man “with whom I built dreams of marriage” (378). The relationship ended suddenly, and Broom experiences grief. She takes a job in New York City as an executive director of a non-profit running a health clinic in the mountains of Burundi. Broom decides to return to New Orleans to be a full-time writer. She visits Byron, Troy, Karen, and Herman in Vacaville, CA on her way. She then visits Darryl and his four sons in Southern California. He runs a construction company and his youngest daughter is named Sarai Monique. She then visits Michael in San Antonio. He drives with Broom to New Orleans.

Movement 4, Chapter 2 Summary: “Saint Rose”

They arrive at Amelia’s house in Saint Rose, where Ivory Mae lives with Elaine. The neighborhood has changed since Katrina, and there are many newcomers. Broom and Ivory Mae go through old documents, photographs, and memories.

Movement 4, Chapter 3 Summary: “Saint Peter”

Broom rents an apartment on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter in the heart of New Orleans. Broom knew the area as a place where she and her siblings worked. She is curious to experience it as a place to live. References to the history of New Orleans are impossible to escape. There is a house where William Faulkner once lived, which is now a bookstore called Faulkner House. Across the street is an apartment where Tennessee Williams once lived.

Movement 4, Chapter 4 Summary: “McCoy”

Almost daily, Broom visits Carl in New Orleans East. Carl can be found “babysitting ruins” (19) at the Yellow House. After the Water, New Orleans East is wrecked. There are no streetlights, the cemetery grounds are untended, and there are many snakes. It is an easy place to hide. Carl has an apartment with his girlfriend and his one-year old son, but he likes to spend time in New Orleans East.

Movement 4, Chapter 5 Summary: “Photo Op”

Broom rents out a room on Airbnb tailored to tourists. She plays up the historic aspects of New Orleans, and no one ever asks about New Orleans East. Ivory Mae stays in the apartment and is thrilled by the neighborhood. As Ivory Mae waits for her Road Home application, the paperwork continues to get lost, the attorneys are constantly reassigned, and she seems to be stuck in a procedural loop. People who do get homes built through Road Home are often the victims of shoddy construction. The kids raise money to repair Amelia’s house in St. Rose. Ivory Mae worries this means she will never get her own house. Ivory Mae’s blood pressure rises due to anxiety. Broom reflects on who has the right to tell the story of a place.

Movement 4, Chapters 1-5 Analysis

In Movement 4, Broom returns to New Orleans to write what becomes The Yellow House. The key theme that emerges in Movement 4 is “When you come from a mythologized place, as I do, who are you in that story?” (393). She lives in the French Quarter, a place:

less than one square mile [that] is the city’s main economic driver; its greatest asset and investment; its highly funded attempt at presenting to the world a mythology that touts the city’s outsiderness, distinctiveness, diversity, progressiveness, and, ironically, its lackadaisical approach to hardship (393).

Her desire to be in the French Quarter is a desire to be at the center of this story. All of her previous experiences in this iconic New Orleans place have been as a worker. Broom describes her family as “supporting players, the labor, the oil that fired the furnace” (395). However, the things that the city is praised for come at the expense of its Black citizens. She flips through a guidebook from 1941, the year her mother was born. She writes that due to segregation, in 1941, her family wouldn’t have been allowed in the neighborhood except to go to work. This highlights the exclusion at the heart of the myth of New Orleans. In pointing to the disparity between the myth of the French Quarter and the reality of East New Orleans, Broom suggests that the city remains inaccessible to many people. She questions to whom New Orleans really belongs.

In Movement 2, Broom writes about hiding her blurred vision. In Movement 4, the kids find out that Ivory Mae can’t hear out of one ear and has been reading lips. In an echo of Broom’s occasional desire not to see, Ivory Mae reflects, “When I got my hearing aid I really heard my own voice for the first time in a long time. My voice is not a distinguished voice. And the world just sounds too loud” (424). Through the similarity of hiding vision loss and hearing loss as a theme, Broom draws a thematic parallel between her and her mother.

While Movement 3 is defined by Broom wanting distance, in Movement 4, she craves closeness. When Broom spends her birthday on New Year’s Eve alone, she is lonely. She no longer craves distance or adventure, she wants togetherness. No one wants to visit because of the crowds in the French Quarter.