The memoir Nola Face, by Brooke Champagne, is a celebration of intersectionality. Despite the subtitle of “A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy,” Champagne parades through the multiple masks she and her city of New Orleans wear, while tossing her insights and insecurities at readers like so many trinkets. Memoirs are vulnerable and intimate. But few have the distinct flavor of this one – ya heard me?
Champagne wastes no time acquainting readers with her origin story by introducing us to Lala, her grandmother. In some ways, Lala created Champagne’s quad-culturalism: American, New Orleanian, Ecuadorian, and Lalan. It was Lala who “would grow up not to rescue New Orleans streets but instead gift them to me.” This matriarch requires decoding. Is her love all-encompassing or abusive? Are her kisses innocent or borderline sexual assault? Champagne shares her confusion on these points with readers because she knows the description of Lala does nothing to encompass the experience of her. Lala is lost in translation not because of words from any language, but because she defies explanation. Champagne identifies how language fails her: “Translating these memories and Lala’s actions back into English now – back to you – becomes then a triple-translation, diced up by time, language, and memory, so no matter how honest I try to be, [it] feels false.”
This defiance of reason exists for many Louisiana writers. Champagne gives it a name: “bugginess.” The definition of this word has a meta-meaning because it eludes a complete definition. We are introduced to the term as she drives her sister to an interview at a French Quarter strip club. As Champagne recounts bugginess of friends and family, the term begins to take form. It could mean rising above the mundane, a way to react to the tribulations levied daily to the residents of this place – like when you can’t beat ‘em, and you sure as hell won’t join ‘em, you laugh instead, live in the moment more, and give a cool but biting comeback like “Oh, I’ve got four toes, motherfucker! and hung up, went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.”
History and place are only two of the avenues intersecting in these living pages that are significantly more complicated than French Quarter streets. In “Nice Lady,” Champagne drills deep into her identities as a Latinx woman, an academic, a victim, and a “nice,” liberal lady. After being asked to join the Tuscaloosa Race Relations Initiative, she is prompted to tell a story where race played a complicated part. She recounted her experience of being car-jacked by two Black men in Baton Rouge while listening to Mos Def. I’ve never read a more raw, honest report of someone wrestling with the ethics of intent versus impact. Her treatment of what she chose to leave out of the story, and what to include, and for whom, is especially good. In her honesty about her dishonesty, she displayed what she is, and what she isn’t. I know Champagne’s express, explicit intention was not to have us celebrate this display of accountability, but I’m going to go ahead and applaud her guts anyway.
There are times in the book where I wondered if Champagne was taking herself too seriously. The memories and topics she chose were mostly heavy. With so much meaning-making to do, I got tangled in her thoughts from time to time. However, between concepts like “bugginess,” or “Nola face” (the face her dog takes when experiencing jealousy of pedigree), she showed real recognition of how somberly she may carry herself and where she wants to lighten up some. Maybe this is the depth of her understanding of intersectionality. Certain people can authenticate her ingredients, but just like any good New Orleans gumbo, the dish is the sum of its parts, and unique to the chef. Claiming the elusive interaction of everything we personify is what Champagne wants. For her, “the Nola Face – became smart, became beautiful, became mine.”
In the end, Champagne didn’t describe the convergence of everything she embodies as I’d wanted. Instead, she brought me to the unknowable crossroads interlacing everything that makes her and made me feel right at home. Because we all live where she does, on the corner of who we’ve been and who we want to be.
NONFICTION
Nola Face
By Brooke Champagne
University of Georgia Press
Published April 1, 2024
Southern Review of Books 