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by Adult Services Library Associate Beth

So you’ve just finished reading The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, and wonder, “What’s next?” Well, first things first: register for one of the BPL Virtual Book Club discussions, scheduled for August 12th at 7pm and August 15th at 11:30am! Also, be sure to check out the BPL-hosted lecture and discussion with Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries of OSU about the intersections of race, class, and Hurricane Katrina. Find this recorded discussion on our Facebook page, YouTube, or the audio version on Podbean.

And after that, if you’re interested in further exploring some of the themes and topics discussed in the book, check out this short list of recommended things to read, watch and listen to. Note that this list includes only things from my own media bubble that I have read, etc., so it is in no way comprehensive. Further, there are many, many other themes this does not cover (issues such as environmental racism/classism and gentrification, just to name a few), so it barely even scratches the surface. But, as always, you can ask BPL librarians for more recommendations on these and related topics!

Housing

“The case of the Willow Street house did not come up again, but I continue to think of it as strange irony for Mom who, of all the things she ever desired, wanted to make a new world with Ivory Mae rules. That is what it meant for her to own a house.”
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

“It was clear that the French Quarter and its surrounds was the epicenter. In a city that care supposedly forgot, it was one of the spots where care had been taken, where the money was spent. Those tourists passing through were the people and the stories deemed to matter.”
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- Evicted follows eight families in Milwaukee in their struggle to maintain housing. Desmond explores how a single eviction keeps individuals and families caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, exploitation and insecure housing.
The Florida Project
- The way Broom writes about the New Orleans French Quarter, a section of the city known for revelry and overabundance, reminded me so much of Sean Baker’s film, as it examines poverty and homelessness in the shadow of Disney World.
“The Lost Homes of Detroit” (Reveal Podcast)
- Told in the intersection of race and class, this podcast episode discusses the foreclosure crisis in the aftermath of the 2008 recession in Detroit, Michigan. Investigators discover that hundreds of millions of dollars of property taxes that were charged to homeowners (for which, the failure to pay resulted in these foreclosures), shouldn’t have been charged in the first place. The podcast forces us to confront what mass foreclosure does not only to the individuals who lose their homes, but also how a community can survive in its wake.

The Storm and the Aftermath

“The government-funded Road Home, intended as a path back into lost homes for the displaced, was frozen in bureaucracy amid heated debates and politicizing about which areas of the city were worth rebuilding.”
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

The Storm; The Old Man and the Storm; Law & Disorder
- This collection of Frontline documentaries cover, respectively, the governmental response leading up to and in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, one elderly man’s determination in rebuilding his home after it was destroyed in the storm, and police misconduct in the midst of the chaos.
Business of Disaster
- Frontline’s (if you couldn’t already tell, I love Frontline) investigation into FEMA’s flood protection insurance system explores the profits involved in the insurance system and the failures of the NYC post- Hurricane Sandy ‘Build It Back’ program – a program similar to the Road Home program to rebuild homes destroyed in Katrina.

Levees and Flooding

“This story, that the levees were blown, the poorest used as sacrificial lambs, would survive and be revived through the generations.”
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

The following explore the politics, failures, and inequities of levee systems across cities in Missouri and Illinois. The last article also explores how climate change, by contributing to rising sea levels and the loss of wetlands in Louisiana, will mean increasing the frequency and destructive capacity of flooding.

What would you recommend to fellow readers of The Yellow House? Leave a comment on the social media post to share with the library community!

A book review & accompanying Book Club Discussion Guide by BPL team member, Beth.

Get My Dark Vanessa online here on Overdrive with your Bexley Public Library card.

(Content Warning: The review discusses abuse of a teenager by an adult.)

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is a literary fiction novel about a teenage girl and her relationship with her forty-two-year-old high school English teacher. Vanessa Wye is the protagonist and the narrator, and the novel jumps between her memories of high school, her college years, and the present. In the present, another survivor of the same teacher’s abuse writes of her own experience in a social media post that goes viral. A journalist is writing an article about this woman’s story and how the school enabled the predatory behavior. Vanessa is being pursued by both to come forward and share her own story. While Vanessa wants to take no part in the article for the sake of her own privacy, she also is adamant that she was not abused: she was a consenting party in the relationship, and her so-called abuser, Jacob Strane, actually loved and cared for her.

This is perhaps the novel’s greatest strength: its ability to expose the psychological tension Vanessa faces as she relives and reevaluates her relationship with Strane. The novel expertly depicts Vanessa as a teenage girl, as she struggles to deal with her conflicting emotions towards Strane and their relationship. As readers and third-parties to the relationship, we can clearly see the abusive and predatory behavior. But by witnessing the situation from Vanessa’s perspective, we also learn how Strane groomed Vanessa to see the relationship as one grounded in love and concern. Even as an adult looking back, Vanessa struggles to see the abuse for what it was.

So while the novel’s exploration into Vanessa’s psyche is its greatest strength, it is also its most important cultural contribution. In extensive and disturbing detail, the novel reveals how an abuser picks and manipulates a victim. Vanessa knows that children get abused by adults, but we see the process Strane uses to convince her that he didn’t choose her, how he convinces her that she was the one who initiated the relationship and manipulates her to believe that she is the one who has all of the power. Using her loneliness and vulnerability against her, he is able to convince her that she is the exception to the rule of adult-child relationships: it is not abuse, it is love. And in this exploration, the novel reveals to its readers why so many victims of abuse do not come forward: they’ve been manipulated to believe they’re not being abused at all.

While the novel does have some weaknesses (it could have been edited down to a shorter length, most of the other characters aside from Vanessa and Strane aren’t developed to the degree that they could or should be), overall I would recommend the book. The book is difficult and disturbing to read, but it has a lot of cultural import. It is controversial, and some may find the depictions of the sexual elements of the abuse gratuitous. However, because the book is thought-provoking, it would make a great choice for a book club discussion (with sufficient content warnings to discussion members ahead of time). It stimulates a lot of discussion and debate; albeit around a difficult and sensitive topic. Though, as is often the case, these sorts of debates and discussions tend to be the ones we most need to have.

(My Dark Vanessa can be borrowed digitally through the Digital Downloads Collaboration/Overdrive/Libby.)

Book Club Discussion Guide (SPOILERS)

Click the button below to continue reading and see the book club discussion guide: