Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy
University of Georgia Press; 2024
Paperback: $25.95
Genre: Memoir in Essays
Reviewed by Edward Journey
In Nola Face, Brooke Champagne, Ecuadorian-French-Sicilian-American, conjures the intensity of a New Orleans upbringing in neighborhoods beyond the streetcar routes and tourist districts. Shock, sorrow, pain, joy, ecstasy, and hilarity co-exist in the space of a few short blocks and a few well-chosen sentences. Her family is introduced in its complexity and contradiction. In an early acknowledgment, Champagne writes, “Dad, if you’re reading this, you’ve reached way too far into the book.” It sounds like a dare to me.
Nola Face is a series of wildly personal essays and observations that analyze and explore the many factors that make Champagne, who currently teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Alabama, a unique and authentic voice from a family that practiced “a cursory, Mardi Gras type of Catholicism.” She may not have seen it all, but she’s seen a lot of it.
Champagne examines her life as one of the younger Gen Xers, who “turned forty, appropriately, in the middle of a global pandemic.” She often drops the names of writers, philosophers, and theorists along the way. The longest essay is a rumination on the legacy of Lorena Bobbitt, who chopped off her abusive husband’s penis and became a pop culture landmark in the aftermath. While giving her pregnant sister a ride to an interview for a stripper job, Champagne ponders if “stripping is more about sexuality or capitalism.” The Dustbuster handheld vacuum cleaner becomes a marriage metaphor. She cites Roland Barthes as she examines her issues with The Giving Tree in general and its author, Shel Silverstein, in particular. She freely admits that she has a “blond problem.”
Many of the essays focus on Champagne’s abuela, Lala. Champagne is close to her grandmother, and their relationship is charming and disturbing. Champagne and Lala steal away in Lala’s red Dodge Charger in the middle of the night to get beignets in the French Quarter. As they pass the statue of Joan of Arc near the French Market, Lala vaguely remembers that “This girl fought a war for New Orleans a long time ago, … she also shaved her head.” Champagne observes that Lala “was my world” at home, although she often makes her cringe in public. Even so, Lala’s hold on her granddaughter is such that Brooke considers it a betrayal of her abuela to pray in English.
Lala teaches the young Brooke how to shoplift. Their shoplifting has its own code of ethics; if the item has no price tag, it’s fair game. Champagne reminds the reader that price tags in those days were “half the size of a postage stamp, or twice the size of a hit of LSD.” Lala, who does not use English, relies on her granddaughter to “translate” what she says to store clerks; Brooke’s translation is often not what was actually said. “Lying in translation was the definitive marker of my childhood,” Champagne writes.
Lala is a recurring and dominant presence in the book. Champagne’s connection to her grandmother might be troubling to a contemporary sensibility, especially in light of Lala’s inappropriate affectionate behavior. Lala’s unfulfilled promise to share a secreto with her granddaughter leads Champagne to search for elusive information after her abuela has died.
It takes courage to write such raw prose, and Champagne acknowledges the tricks of memory. “Memory’s many vagaries…continue to challenge and delight my writing process.” Her frank and unembarrassed delivery of her stories as she remembers them establishes a quick rapport with her readers (and her students, too, I suspect). Those inclined to clutch their pearls should be forewarned that Champagne freely and unapologetically makes use of what the ladies once referred to as “language.” “I love my swearing and my swearing is a constant worry,” she writes in an essay in defense of a word I am hesitant to repeat.
Champagne brings expansive knowledge, experience, empathy, and wit to these essays. Her stream-of-consciousness delivery makes the reader wonder where the next paragraph might lead. There is a section of Nola Face in which Champagne debates herself on which label applies to her writing – essayist or memoirist? I have a simple answer: She is a writer – and everything is fair game.
Edward Journey, a retired university professor and theatre professional living in Birmingham, regularly shares his essays in the online journal “Professional Southerner” (www.professionalsoutherner.com).
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