NOLA FACE

A writer reflects on her craft and the inspiration she’s drawn from the vibrant chaos of her family and her New Orleans hometown.

Champagne opens her essay collection with a discussion of when she started to teach creative writing at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge: “Often, we sucked. Still, we taught anyway.” Champagne eventually learned to play the performative role of “expert-cum-doofus” and build rapport with students through games such as “Two truths and a lie,” which becomes a recurring theme. The essays weave in and out of her memories, offering shifting perspectives on the Big Easy and her boisterous family members. Among the most influential person in her life was her tough, Ecuadorian grandmother, Lala. In “Cielito Lindo,” Champagne describes their late-night hunts for beignets through the French Quarter and begins a dialectic on the different “worlds” of English and Spanish. In “Lying in Translation,” she grapples with how some of Lala’s actions might be seen by others as abusive: “I still ask myself if I can be trusted to know what I felt across my two languages and cultures,” she writes. These ideas come into focus much later in “Bobbitt,” in which Champagne’s searing analysis of the Lorena Bobbitt trial ties together powerful reflections on culture, gender, false memories, and translation. In “What I Know About the Chicken Lady,” Champagne’s French Sicilian father recounts his use of crack cocaine and his dalliance with voodoo, and later, in “Exercises,” Champagne simultaneously deconstructs their contentious relationship and her efforts to find her own voice as a writer.

Violence seems to lurk around every corner in Champagne’s essays, like the active shooter present at the hospital during the birth of her daughter (“Push”) or the harrowing carjacking at the center of “Nice Lady.” The latter is a standout, allowing Champagne to push further into her ideas on false narratives, address her thoughts on racism, and completely change the way readers will think about the word pop forever over the course of one terrifying paragraph. Whether she’s recounting a cruel game played by her mother or taking her sister to a job interview at a strip club, the author draws from a dizzying number of influences before distilling them into singular, powerful moments. Her family stories are somehow simultaneously soulful, comforting, electric, and possibly dangerous—much like her well-studied setting, the city of New Orleans. Her descriptions give the place an alluring sense of magical realism, which she then balances with a deadpan sense of observational and self-deprecating humor. Some tangents and metaphors—such as her extended analysis of her place in the Gen X spectrum, or the metatextual piece “McCleaning with the Dustbuster”—have less impact than others. She’s at the height of her powers when she focuses on telling and re-telling her lived experiences. Each essay and stray thought invites readers further into her processes, even when they feel contradictory or convoluted. As she notes herself, “Humans contain multitudes.”

A compelling collection that explores a unique life from many angles.