“Nola Face” is a collection of 25 essays, none too long, most of which have been published before in various reviews from Florida to Ohio to Los Angeles. Some are explorations of particular topics and others are memoir/autobiography. Champagne is extraordinarily candid about her own history.
We learn a great deal about her grandmother, Abuela, called Lala, her mother and her sister. Her grandmother is deceased. It is not known what her mother and sister think about these revelations. The grandmother, Lala, was an unusual person. An immigrant from Ecuador, Lala never learned much English and, seen from one angle, remained both vulnerable and defiantly proud in her refusal to melt in the American melting pot.
During her childhood in New Orleans, Brooke would serve as her abuela’s translator, when that was needed. And it was a free translation to say the least. In a department store Lala would buy a few things and shoplift small items, usually toys for Brooke. At the counter she might mumble to the clerk in Spanish “I am stealing from you, dumbass,” and Brooke would translate that as something like “Nice haircut” or “This is a very clean store.”
Lala had suffered abuse as a child, raised by aunts, and then as an adult at the hands of her unfaithful and sometimes violent husband. Champagne is uncertain, she tells us, whether she can call some of Lala’s behavior with her as abuse. Some friends think so. Champagne holds back nothing of her family history. Her mother was abused by her father, and Champagne’s sister has over time had a number of children with a man everybody understood to be no good.
Happily, Champagne herself, after a rough childhood and some rambunctious partaking of alcohol and some drugs, is happily married, with a small daughter, and the chain is broken. That rough childhood has given her a body of material, obviously, but also a pretty tough attitude. No subjects are off-limits, from the literarily theoretical to her discussion of the uses of obscenity in everyday life.
For example, her daughter loves Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” First, what is the lesson there? A woman should sacrifice everything asked for? Champagne the feminist says no. Champagne the mother, however, knows she would do anything for her daughter. Champagne has read Roland Barthes on “the death of the author.” Theoretically the author does not matter or even exist. But author Silverstein was guilty of bad behavior. Should we shun the book? Should J. K. Rowling’s remarks on trans people cause us to turn our backs on Harry Potter?
Her essay on obscene words was, obviously, not unprintable. But it can’t be discussed on radio, even the title. We can only report that her youth equipped her with a lexicon of swear words she loves to use, and cursing helps people get through torture, the pain of illness and everyday life.
