Kortney Morrow is a poet and writer creating from her studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has received support from 68to05, The Academy of American Poets, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Transition Magazine.
Her debut poetry collection, Run It Back, was the winner of the 2024 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize.
At Electric Lit Morrow tagged ten books that "guided my thinking around place-based liberation, the hopes we put into geography, and the complexities of reclaiming an ever-changing place in search of freedom." One title on the list:
The Yellow House by Sarah M. BroomRead about the other books on Morrow's list at Electric Lit.
Broom’s debut memoir, The Yellow House, recounts the post-Katrina transformation of New Orleans East through the material history of hertitular family house. On and off again, Broom returns to, journeys away, against, from, and towards the mythology of her city, her family, and the South. When Hurricane Katrina displaces Broom’s family—going from 24 family members in New Orleans to two brothers in all of Louisiana—her family’s house receives a letter from the city government announcing its demolition. Broom is forced to come to a new understanding of home beyond materiality. The Yellow House ends with the line “the story of our house was the only thing left.” In doing so, it becomes clear that the stories we hold and share can act as an embodiment and a transference of memory, of foundation, and shelter.
The Yellow House is among Juliet Patterson's eight titles that tackle the subject of ancestral legacy, J.R. Ramakrishnan's seven New Orleans books that go beyond Mardi Gras, and Lit Hub's ten best memoirs of the decade.
--Marshal Zeringue
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