Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Nola Face: A Latina's Life in the Big Easy

Nola Face: A Latina's Life in the Big Easy

Champagne, Brooke

Paperback

Series: Crux: The Georgia Literary Nonfiction

Biographies GeneralSelf-Help

Publisher Price: $25.95

ISBN10: 0820366536
ISBN13: 9780820366531
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: Apr 1 2024
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.56
Height: 0.45 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Early in Brooke Champagne's childhood, her Ecuadorian grandmother Lala (half bruja, half santa) strictly circumscribed the girl's present and future: become beautiful but know precisely when to use it; rationalize in English but love in God's first language, the superior Spanish; and if you must write, Dios help you, at least make a subject of me. Champagne's betrayal of these confounding dictates began before they were even spoken, and she soon started both writing and hiding the truth about whom she was becoming.

The hilarious, heartbreaking essays in this collection trace the evolutions of this girlhood of competing languages, ethnicities, aesthetics, politics, and class constraints against the backdrop of a boozy New Orleans upbringing. In these essays, Champagne and members of her family love poorly and hate well, whip and get whipped, pray and curse in two languages, steal from The Man and give to themselves, kiss where it hurts, poke where it hurts worse, and keep and spill each other's secrets--first face-to-face, then on the page. They believe and doubt and reckon with the stories they tell about themselves and where they come from, finally becoming most human, most alive, in their connections to one another.

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