'The Yellow House' author is rebuilding her childhood home that was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina through words
"The Yellow House was witness to our lives. When it fell down, something in me burst."
For author Sarah Broom, there’s really no place like home, even long after it’s gone.
"How to resurrect a house with words?” Broom asks in her debut book, “The Yellow House.”
This becomes her mission in Broom’s captivating new memoir as she works to rebuild her childhood home in a different way: through personal memories, archival information, shared stories and family history.
"The Yellow House is significant to me," Broom told ABC News. "First of all, my mother bought it when she was 19 years old in 1961, she used every penny she had to buy it. She built a world inside it, that me and my 11 siblings belonged to and grew into."
Broom is the youngest of 12, born to mother Ivory Mae and her father, Simon Broom, who passed away just six months after she was born.
"My father was critical to the house because he helped to build it," Broom explained. "So, when the house fell down, I felt somehow that the way I connected to my father, the traces of him were also scattered. So, in a way this book is part journey and part me trying to discover who my father was."
In her book, Broom explores the foundation of The Yellow House and takes readers on a journey through New Orleans East, where she grew up.
"New Orleans East is not a place you find on most of the tourist maps," Broom told ABC News. "There were no books on New Orleans East. So growing up there, it often felt we were cut off from the rest of the city."
She grapples with those emotions in her book, writing: "Why do I sometimes feel that I do not have the right to the story of a city I come from?"
Sarah is now reclaiming the narrative of her city and her home throughout the pages of The Yellow House.
"This book really is a re-mapping of the city of New Orleans to include my family, friends and all the people I love," she said.
