Im sarah and im in harlem. I wrote the yellow house to answer what is a basic and also annex substantial question about who belongs, whose stories get told. I wanted to speak a voice into the literature. I wondered why the stories of me and my family and my nieces and nephews didnt exist in the narrative of new orleans. I wanted to make a book that was the beginning of an answer to a question about how our lives matter and how we deserved to also be on the american map and in the citys stor cities story. This book is not only a book about the house i lived in and loved and that in certain ways remains a part of me but its an attempt to think about what it actually means to belong to a place, what it means to feel that you have somehow come from a place that has shaped you and made you into the person you are. For me, American Ingenuity i understand because i come from the city where jazz was born and so what it teaches us is we pull from all the disparate pieces of the world the things inside of us and the things beyond us and from that we can try to make something new, try to make a new tapestry and for me, that was the work of this book is to make a collage and how to use the oral history and go into the archives and pull from the history and use all of those pieces, the city itself and the quality of the place. I think that its also important to go beyond the things you remember to inquire about other peoples memories and to fact check because memory can lie and so for me that was the work. A few examples of the way that i thought about memory and interrogating in a way is how i was thinking about my family history. All of us who are from families understand that over time we build in the allure and throughout generations we often accept the stories for what they are. So my work was not just to be in relation to my family as the youngest of ten children but the stories from birth, the stories about my own origins, the stories about why i was named what i was named and stories that even i began to develop. There is one in particular about my childhood friend alvin who died when we were quite young, under 20. And i had created for myself a story where exactly he died, but the circumstances were. The truth was actually really hard. It was much harder than the story that i made for myself and going back into the archives and looking at the newspaper stories, i realized that the truth was a lot more brutal than i wanted to admit. The thing we all have to learn from history is that its important to ask the question who is doing the composing. Part of it is to look back at courage and bravery and context and inform the present time. What actually happened because that is indeed the bedrock for how we grow. This story that i was telling was an important thing because i thought so much a about the ground itself and about the stability of it, the structure of the foundation. And the thing that i understood very quickly even perhaps as a child there is a wonderful quotation to look in the interactive choice and i completely agree. Its important because they create in us i think from a very young time a sense of structure for our lives. It is a metaphor for so much of our lives. Being a metaphor for the self, being a way to also examine. I couldnt have asked for a better structure because houses have architecture and so do books. The house gave me a way of creating a kind of tactile world of thinking about the impact of a room and of an object and how those things can actually inform our immaterial world so im thinking so much these days about those of us that are in this together and what it means to be in our respective places. Its telling you something about your lot in life and that is something that is deeply important to me and is not lost on me and then also the ways in which weather you own the home, rent the home, create a kind of space we can unfold ourselves and be comfortable or not comfortable. This is something we understand on every level because it isnt thais inthat different in certas from what it means to also be american and to belong to this place. I think one of the things that interests me is what happens when a city is mythologized and deeply loved as new orleans. What happens and the stories are told to the exclusion of others and so one of the things i understood many years later when i was outside of new orleans is the ways in which i allowed the city to speak for me. I really wanted to think about our connection and about the connection to a certain spot of land, the connection to a city. Understanding the places have personalities and make us and ground us and give us a certain Vantage Point. From the rest of the street, cut off and i believe that gave a certain Vantage Point no other positioning could. On the matter of memory and reason and logic i think it is a complicated thing. And then facing in a certain direction that part of the way in which i want to complicate my own work not just to remember what you say i think this happens but i cant remember but actually to go back into the archives to interrogate the memories and say what is the thing i was building that is the truth of the matter . Memories contain an essence a kernel of truth. Memory isnt always wrong. But i do feel that going beyond the thing that you remember and backing it with everything you can find with evidence and this is interesting because my grandmother who was important to me and new orleans had alzheimers at the end of her life and her so much she didnt remember. So one memory is so what else can we go is the question i was asking. So grew up in a colorful house where storytelling was a sport. And all tallying variations of the story and to find a place and i would hide in closets or under the table and simply trying to remember every single word being said. And i would record these things in my mind and then go find the exact person who the story was about and essentially the nia gained the name tape recorder what i didnt remember is that example to tell me the story of myself and in my own confession. And so before that moment and monique which is my middle name and my mother turned to me in the parking lot of the school and said, when they asked your name, tell them sarah. I thought sarah . Who sarah . And i started to go by this name in school and it created this duality in me. So they call the letters out in public and that name had so much distance and then my middle name and my family calls me mel. And at some point i came to understand of this black woman in america but to this day the story of how i was named and who in my life knows which name to call is a recurring theme. I am thankful for the memory of my mother who helped me remembe remember. I hope readers learn the dynamism of absence. And to never look upon any landscape the same way. And i always think and the memories them the jury. And that is such a vital thing that i think matters deeply to all of us. And then to the careful and who they are and even on the edges of the map there are stories and peoples lives matter. I think writers exist for these moments we have to take what is left of something and try to make something of it. How can i use words like the inadequate tools for that going back and revisiting James Baldwin has a wonderful wine and was afraid to buy for me that was the cause to face my fear and all the things i want to know but ultimately new had major with an faced