If you hope to immerse yourself in our one-hour conversation with Sarah Broom but only have a moment to spare, please sample the first two minutes.

Ode to Ivory Mae

During those first two minutes with Sarah Broom, winner of the 2019 National Book Award for her memoir, The Yellow House – before we even get to our conversation – you will hear an ode to her mother, Ivory Mae, that will take your breath away.

And if that Ode to Ivory Mae makes you want to know more about what exactly she did with Sarah, the youngest of 12 children, to create Sarah’s unusual gift for the written – and spoken – word-- then take just another minute to listen to the following short exchange.

Reading Proverbs Out Loud (77 seconds)

And then, to understand more about Sarah Broom’s obsessive attention to detail and her ability to identify the most memorable, granular details from her subjects, spend a minute watching the following excerpt on how, as a child, Sarah came to be known as “The Recorder.”

“The Recorder” (48 seconds)

And then – well by then – you might as well accept that watching our full conversation with Sarah Broom may be a better way to spend the next hour than whatever you had been planning to do before.

We hope you enjoy our conversation with an author who, with the help of multiple generations of her family, has put a neglected area, of a legendary American city, on the map.