Maya Sloan < 3's Oklahoma

“I’m doing a professional interview right now.”

--Maya Sloan

Maya Sloan gets around.

When I met her, she was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she earned an M.F.A. in creative writing. She also received an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Boston University. She’s lived in London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York. On her blog—her awesome blog (mayasloan.com)—you will find photos of a workshop she attended in Bulgaria, detailed accounts of auditions and other adventures, and transcripts of interviews with interesting people she’s met in Florida, Hollywood and Brooklyn, where she lives now.

There are also a few accounts of her being expelled from places like red carpet events or, for instance, grocery stores whose owners do not approve of late night interpretive dances with the fresh produce. Maya is a little weird is what I’m saying, and there is ample evidence to suggest that, however brilliantly she has cultivated her weirdness over time, the seeds of it were sewn right here in Oklahoma, where she was born and raised.

“I mean, what do you do when you are an artistic, freethinking kid in a place like Oklahoma?” she asks on her blog. “You do sh** like put on pajamas, go to the local gay hook-up hotel, and hang out with the bored security guards.”

Or, if you are Doug Schaffer, the 16 year old narrator of Sloan’s first novel, High Before Homeroom, you fall in love with a girl named Laurilee and embark on a journey through hell (and by “hell,” I mean “an addiction to crystal meth”) and back (from rehab) so that she will think you are cool. Hijinks will ensue, judging from the amazing, Moby Award Winning book trailer I viewed at Maya’s website—where I also learned what “book trailers” and “Moby Awards” are.

By hijinks I mean Doug’s brother returning injured from the war and other complicated things that are likely to be “poignant,” as Rilla Askew says. Or “profane” as she also says. Or “a smart and wholly original take on what it means to yearn…in the 21st century,” as John McNally says. Though many of us eschew the meth addiction route to love and acceptance (and ultimately Doug Schaffer’s attempt at addiction fails, as well) his coming of age tale is one that we can identify with. He is an outsider who seeks solace in books. He loves Jack Keruoac—idolizes Dean Moriarty. He is in love. He is a bright, creative thinker who feels oppressed by the flatness and plainness of Oklahoma.

“He’s so much like me in that way,” Maya said, during my professional interview with her via cell phone. “Just reading voraciously and thinking about getting outside of Oklahoma. He hasn’t reached the point that I’m at, where you really start to appreciate all the things about Oklahoma.”

According to Maya’s “unofficial” bio, which you can find on her official website, she grew up in Oklahoma City and began writing awesome emo poems before she even made it out of elementary school. She was “one of the only Jews to attend Bishop McGuiness Catholic High School.”

“Did you feel like an outsider?” I ask her.

“Uh,” she replies, staggered momentarily by my penetrating insight, “Yeah. But you find your people because there are a lot of us who feel that way in Oklahoma, you know? A ton. And you find them. And because we’re all in a similar situation, you meet some really extraordinary people.”

The “situation” she’s referring to is, to an extent, a condition of adolescence. She says, “When you’re a teenager, and you’re angsty, you’re going to look for anything to blame that on.” And it would be hard to deny that the culture and landscape of Oklahoma can at times seem to reflect the very essence of adolescent ennui. In an excerpt from the novel posted on Maya’s website, Doug Schaffer says, “Oklahoma must be the flattest state in America, and there’s nothing on it.”
But even this flatness and emptiness is something an Okie may come to appreciate in time, Maya says. “There’s less going on, and you have to have a really big imagination. And create…you know, create entertainment on your own. And I don’t think I would have read as voraciously. I don’t think I would have learned the things on my own…if I hadn’t been raised in Oklahoma. “

There are other qualities Maya possesses as a writer that are likely influenced by her Oklahoma up-bringing. She is open and honest, and she has a clear eye for truth. She has a sense of humor that can encompass the sweet and the bitter. She will make you laugh, even at things that are incredibly sad. She is compassionate and charming--so she gets away with being smartass. I expect Doug’s character to be a likable smartass too—irreverent, insightful and hilarious.
I am very much looking forward to the novel’s release party, on June 22. Appropriately, it will take place in Oklahoma City at Barnes and Noble at 8100 N. May Avenue. There will be a screening of the book’s award-winning trailer, and Maya will do a reading with an electric guitar accompaniment. I will be there. I will be wearing pajamas.

This article appeared in the June 2010 issue of OKIE Magazine.

Sy Hoahwah Writes Home

“Like a character from fiction, I will take you on your own terms.”

From “Moment at the 2004 Miss Indian USA Pageant with Velroy”

Close to New Year’s Eve last year, I got a phone call from my friend, Sy Hoahwah. He said that he and some friends were going to be coming through town on their way to California, where he would be doing some readings to promote his new book of poetry, Velroy and the Madischie Mafia. We’d been talking on the phone a lot recently because he said he was considering moving out here to Lawton, where he has family. Sy and I were fellow students in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas several years ago. I’m not sure I knew then that we both had connections to Lawton. I don’t think it came up until I was getting ready to move back here. But I was not surprised to learn it was true because Sy has a quiet, easy and open way of being that was familiar and appealing to me, especially in a place where I felt strange most of the time. I think it may be a regional thing—that openness. Maybe it has something to do with the plains.

At any rate, I was so excited to hear that Sy might be moving out here that I commenced making promises to do whatever I could to help, bearing in mind that my primary skills are enthusiasm and good intentions. So when he called and said he was coming through in two days and wondered if he could do a reading while he was here, I said, “Heck yes you can do a reading while you’re here! In two days!” I then added panic to my repertoire of useful skills.

The panic was unnecessary, it turns out, as I had only to call up my friend, Sam McMichael’s, who participates in and helps to organize the monthly open mic readings (sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta) at the Unitarian Universalist Church on 8th and B Ave. Sam said that we could use the church for the reading, and he and several other regular open mic readers and listeners helped to get the word out. So it happened that a pretty good crowd turned out on January 2nd to hear an amazing local poet read.

Sy’s casual demeanor suited the impromptu gathering well. Listening to him read was not very different from listening to him talk to his friends. The reading was intimate and extremely gratifying. Perhaps it was especially rewarding for us because the landscape of the book is so familiar. The poems are about Comanche County, Oklahoma—about Madischie, the Witchita Mountains, Lake Lawtonka.

In a review of Velroy and the Madischie Mafia published in the most recent World Literature in Review, Jeannette Calhoun Mish says, “Sense of place, in these poems, is also sense of history. The interpenetration of history and the present force an ironic perspective and a tolerance for contradiction.” The poems tell stories that are real and mythical, dark and humorous. They are plain and true. Not simple.

The poem “Comanche County,” for instance, describes Lawton in this way:

The town of Lawton is a courthouse lawn and hanging tree
God is everywhere
Even in the cheese dip served at El Cena Casa.
Jesus is the waitress
With big tits and psoriasis on the elbows.

Life was a Thanksgiving coloring book.
Everyone greeted this Indian with roasted turkey
And cornbread dressing.

I said that Sy has about him a quality of openness that I associate with the plains, and it may seem that I mean to say he is friendly--hospitable, like Oklahoma. There is some truth to that, I suppose, but what I really mean to say is that Sy is honest, and his poetry is honest in the same way the plains are open, honest and bare. Maybe they do have something to hide, but they have nowhere to hide it. What you see is what you get, if you bother to look. And you should bother to look.

If you missed it the first time, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know Sy Hoahwah will be reading from his book again on April 23rd at 7pm at the Leslie Powell Gallery at 620 SW D Avenue. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet the poet, to hear him read and to pick up a copy of his book. It is also available through West End Press, and you can read excerpts at the Poetry Foundation Website.