Eight titles that tackle the subject of ancestral legacy

Juliet Patterson is the author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide (2022) and two full-length poetry collections, Threnody (2016), a finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Poetry Award, and The Truant Lover (2006), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award.

At Electric Lit Patterson tagged eight books that "uniquely tackle the subject of ancestral legacy, leading readers into social and historical questions as one way of understanding the personal past." One title on the list:

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House is an ambitious and far-reaching memoir layered with the political and racial history of New Orleans, the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and her large family over half a century. The story revolves around a house in a neglected neighborhood of New Orleans East, a home that serves as both a material artifact and metaphor for the book’s larger discussions of class and race, and as a repository for Broom’s own personal hauntings. Told in three movements that unfold with increasing tension and speed, The Yellow House is both social eulogy and a wry and loving testimony of one family’s life. Broom’s keen observations and eye for detail have rightly earned this book high acclaim.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue