New Orleans Is My Second Language
We Lived in Los Angeles, But My Mother’s Songs, Stories, Cooking—and Most of All the Way She Spoke—Made Louisiana Feel Like Home
For a time, most likely between the ages of 5 and 8, I floated around with a secret: a dogged yet utterly erroneous notion that my family spoke a second language—on my mother’s side at least.
The assumption arrived out of nowhere, planted itself, and for a while, took root. I let it bloom. Quietly, I kept a list in my head. My mother would refer to objects or routines by names I never heard on television nor picked up in the chatter along the breezeway at my southwest Los Angeles …
