| Before undertaking the creation of a heretofore unwritten social history, Sarah M. Broom returned to her earliest inspirations: her family and neighbors.ADAM SHEMPER / SKYE STUDIOS / UNSPLASH / KATIE MARTIN / THE ATLANTIC) |
How to Write the Book No One Wants You to Write
Sarah M. Broom was writing long before Hurricane Katrina. What would ultimately become her memoir, The Yellow House, started as a collection of notes and essays on the house she grew up in, her family, her neighbors, and her local community in New Orleans. She began in the late 1990s after leaving home for college, and it eventually became impossible for her to see the work as anything other than a book project: a family portrait and a history of New Orleans, which would explore the larger social narrative of the United States.