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

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Movement 4, Chapter 6-AfterChapter Summaries & Analyses

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

Movement 4, Chapter 6 Summary: “Investigations”

Broom researches the history of her apartment at the Williams Research Center in the Historic New Orleans Collection. The lineage of every address is organized digitally. The history of the address dates back to 1795, when it was a lot owned by Marianne Dubreuil dite Brion, a free woman of color. Brion was the daughter of a former enslaved person, and Marianne likely inherited the property from slaveholders. Finding the history of the Yellow House is more complicated. She consults the “the Conveyance Office, the Office of Vital Records, the Real Estate and Records Office in city hall, the Notarial Archives, and libraries” (434). Broom tells the city planner that she is interested how a residential neighborhood became an industrial neighborhood. Unattended houses revert to the classification of light industrial. Ultimately, Broom discovers that New Orleans East is a light-industrial zone where the homes of residents are the exception.

Movement 4, Chapter 7 Summary: “Phantoms”

In late January, Carl tells Broom that the marshes are burning. Meanwhile, Broom saves a newspaper article about a man shot by the grandfather of his child. Carl tells her that the man who was shot was their cousin Antonio “Tony” Miller. He was 21 years old. Carl and Broom go to the funeral. Gun violence is high in the city. Mental health services are underfunded. An inadequate educational system and a bad job market contribute to hopelessness and violence. The unemployment rate is seven percent while 26 percent of those with jobs work in hospitality and food services, where the pay is low. She thinks about her nephew James who has been in prison for 13 years. She reads his letters. They were born a month apart. Broom takes Ivory Mae to visit her half-brother Joe Soule. Joe Soule tricked Ivory Mae and her two siblings into handing over the deed of their father’s house. Ivory Mae’s father Lionel Soule died of a heart attack one day after his wife was murdered in what was likely a robbery. Ivory Mae never met him. Broom searches for video footage of her father. Carl and Broom grow very close.

Movement 4, Chapter 8 Summary: “Dark Night, Wilson”

Decay comes in small, cumulative ways to Wilson Street. Pipes burst beneath concrete, broken-down vehicles line the street, and businesses close. Michael visits New Orleans for a job interview in a hotel restaurant. Michael and Broom wait for Carl on Wilson Street. Mail is delivered to the house, even though there is no longer a house or a mailbox. Carl and Michael use 4121 Wilson as their address for voting and on driver’s licenses. There are children on the street. Broom wonders how they will describe where they grew up. Broom photographs her family in the darkness.

Movement 4, Chapter 9 Summary: “Cutting Grass”

Broom goes to cut the grass at 4121 Wilson with Carl. They are cutting for the sake of it, to make the space look prettier. Cutting the grass is a ritual, a way of restoring order to the property. Michael is there and so is Carl’s girlfriend, her daughter Lia, and Mr. Carl, their baby. There is some tension with their neighbor Poochie. Carl watches over the property, holding onto something that belongs to the family.

After Summary

Eleven years after Hurricane Katrina, Road Home settles Ivory Mae’s case. Elaine dies at the house on St. Rose. Soon after, Ivory Mae signs the property away. The land will be auctioned off, and Ivory Mae receives a small grant. She stays in Amelia’s old house.

Movement 4, Chapter 6-After Analysis

When Broom visits a bookstore looking for books on New Orleans East, she is told the area is too young for history. She reflects on the fallacy at the heart of that logic, writing “we are all born into histories, worlds existing before us. The same is true of places. No place is without history” (433). She suggests that what this really means is that the history of New Orleans East and the people who lived there wasn’t considered worthy of recording.

The theme of pictures as evidence emerges repeatedly throughout the book. Another absence that haunts Broom is the absence of her father. Broom describes her father as “six pictures” (456). These photographs capture:

my father playing the banjo, with Lynette in the frame; my father at a social and pleasure club ball with grandmother Lolo; my mother sitting on my father’s lap; my father walking Deborah down the aisle; my father in a leather coat and black fedora, sitting at a bar with Uncle Joe, raising a beer, mouth open, saying something to the picture taker; and my youngish father standing in front of an old Ford, pointing his finger at the camera’s eye (456).

Broom goes to the Historic New Orleans Collection archives to try to find visual evidence of her father performing with Doc Paulin’s brass band. She wants to see her father “in motion” believing that somehow it “would change everything” (457). She thinks she finds her father in the footage and she is elated. She photocopies them, but when her mother sees the photos, she tells her the man in them isn’t her father. In the same way that Broom searches for her experience of New Orleans in books and mythology, she also searches for her father. Photographs provide one link to the past.

In Movement 4, the story of the Yellow House comes to an end. When the property is sold and Broom’s family moves on, “the story of our house was the only thing left” (483), she writes. It is appropriate that the last section of the book describes looking for a history of New Orleans East in a bookstore. By completing her book, Broom suggests that by writing it down, there is now evidence of the hopes, dreams, lives, and struggles of people who lived in New Orleans East. This helps Broom let go.