By Emily Schleiger

The Coachella Review had the pleasure of reprinting Maryann Aita’s essay “The Geography of Flight” in our Winter 2021 issue. The essay also appears in Aita’s debut memoir Little Astronaut (ELJ Editions). Aita’s collection of essays deals with her childhood experience in the shadows of family members’ illnesses (anorexia, cancer, alcoholism), the ways in which she coped, and the effects on intimacy and feelings of loneliness in adulthood. The book wrestles with heavy topics while experimenting with different forms, like screenwriting, journalism, math problems, and sketches. I recently had the joy of chatting with Maryann about her book and her writing process.

 

TCR: You write that you named your inner strength “little astronaut,” which is the title of the memoir. I’m curious when that name first came to you.

Maryann Aita: The name came about in therapy and in conversation with a friend in my MFA program, kind of at the same time, but independently. The friend referred to me as an astronaut, and I was like, “Oh, my God, ‘astronaut,’ that’s the name of the book.” Because I had all these outer space references in my essays anyway.

Around the same time, my therapist asked me to describe my inner resilience, to anthropomorphize it. I found it a really useful thing to do. So, then I thought, “Well, I’m calling the book Astronaut.” And then the name morphed into Little Astronaut, because I like the idea of a young girl kind of braving something just incomprehensible.

 

TCR: I don’t have a cool name for my equivalent of “little astronaut.” It kind of inspired me. I feel like I need a name for it now.

MA: Yeah, I think everyone should manifest their inner resilience. Later, I got a little astronaut tattoo. It’s a great way to talk about my book, but the tattoo is really my personal thing.

 

TCR: So, you say you were already kind of writing on the space theme in several essays.  H ow did that come about?

MA: A large part of this book is my thesis for my MFA [from Sarah Lawrence College]. Not all, but a large part. And when I was writing the thesis, I wanted to do the essays as a collection. I was talking to my thesis advisor, who was Jo Ann Beard—I just feel like mentioning that because she will say something in a sentence, and it’s just the most profound thing.  I met with her for like thirty minutes, and we solved the entire problem. I told her, “I have all these essays, and most of them are about childhood and my family, but there are a couple that are not quite on that topic, but I still feel like [they] fit.” And she said, “Well, there’s probably something you’re already writing about, that you don’t even realize, some kind of metaphor or some kind of imagery. Look through what you’ve written.” And at first, I was like, “Well, I have some pieces with birds … And then all of a sudden, I saw: “O h, wow, I use the word ‘constellation’ a lot and ‘galaxy’ and ‘outer space.’” So, then I started intentionally writing into it, with the essays I added after that point; once I discovered it, I made it intentional.

 

TCR:  I love all the visuals in the book—the sketch of the layout of your house and the presentation slides and the different formats— I just found it really interesting; there were surprises on every page. It was all pertinent to the story, and it made me want to flip through it again when I was done.

MA: I take that as a really big compliment.

 

TCR: Do you do a lot of drawing normally? Or is it something you started?

MA: Not really.  I’m not an artist. And you can tell these are not expertly drawn images, but I wanted to do them myself, partially because the way I draw kind of looks like a little kid. And that’s sort of the point, you know.  The whole narrative is partially an adult, partially a child discovering things. But I have started drawing more, and I did try to get a little better at drawing through this book.

 

TCR:  I’m curious about your process of deciding which essays to include in this book; in nonfiction, I feel like it’s difficult to decide on a focus among all the stories we could tell.

MA: There was a little bit of experimenting in terms of what fit and what didn’t. And then the other big thing I did was, when I decided what the overall themes of the book were—loneliness and intimacy, and my depression was part of that, too—that became the focus. And then I have another little pile of essays that’s got a lot of stuff about my mother and a lot of stuff about my sister, which I think some people would think could fit in this book. But for me, those essays are about identity and acceptance. So, theme and a feeling of “fit” were the big things for me.

My second book that I’m beginning, another collection of essays, focuses more on my mother’s alcoholism. But my coming to the realization that she is an alcoholic was sort of the big part of the Little Astronaut.

I know there’s a lot of debate about this in the nonfiction community, but I’m someone who writes a lot closer to the present than I think is typical. I definitely write about the past and childhood, but I’m also happy to write about something that happened a year ago. I mean, the essay about the cat was written about two days after it happened, capturing the moment. But maybe I’ll write about it two years from now and it’ll be different. Or ten, twenty years—it’ll all be valid writing with different perspectives.

 

TCR: What do you feel was the most challenging essay to write?

MA: Probably “North Star,” which is one about my sister and about how there’s this distance between us, that, really, I’ve imposed. And I feel very ambivalent about that, so I think that one was hard to write in the sense that it’s a hard thing to express.

I would say “Star Child,” the one in the format of a one-woman show, was probably the most emotionally taxing one. It was about a lot of stuff I hadn’t dealt with, and I was facing it as I was writing it.

 

TCR: Was that actually a one-woman show or just structured that way?

MA: I didn’t perform it as such. I have done a one-woman show, which was inspired by the essay in Little Astronaut that’s called “Virginity Limbo.” It became a one-woman show called “My Dysfunctional Vagina.” It was about forty-five minutes long. But “Star Child” was not intended to be a one-woman show. It was more the message I wanted to get across, that this is a story about my mother, but I’m telling it, and I’m going to be the star of this—because she’s always the star.

 

TCR: I love the slide in that essay that says, “It all makes sense,” surrounded by what seem to be blinking lights, referring to your understanding of your mother’s alcoholism. And I have definitely had those epiphany moments, usually after therapy when I’m putting stuff together, and then all of a sudden, I realize I’ve been putting this together for a while. And it’s right there. I’m thinking other people will be able to relate to that, too.

MA: It’s definitely the kind of thing where you’ve known this. And then someone else says it and you’re like, “Oh, my God.” You just needed to hear the words. It’s funny because my psychiatrist has read the book. I offered it to her, and she read it. And I was talking to her about the book—it’s a little nerve racking with it coming out—and I mentioned that moment, and she remembers my face when I said that. So even my psychiatrist remembers the epiphany I had in it. I’m glad that resonated with you.

 

TCR: So, were you still rewriting this when the pandemic hit? What was the timing?

MA: Yeah, so I finished my MFA in May of 2017. And I had a final draft of the book at that time. I submitted it around for about two years to a handful of presses. Somewhere along the way, I kind of went back and I sat with it. And I wrote the essay “North Star,” that one that I was saying was difficult to write because I felt like I was missing something about my adult relationship with my sister. I must have written that in 2020. And then I went to AWP 2020, like, “I’m gonna find a publisher for my book; this is going to be the year; I’ve met all these small presses.” I was so excited. And then the world exploded with the pandemic. So, I reordered the essays and did some edits in mid-2020, but most of the book was already written.

 

TCR: I feel like the timing, though, works. I’m curious to see if other readers will feel this way, too.  But there have been times in the pandemic where I just feel like an outsider. And so, this metaphor of the little astronaut resonates with me.

MA: The metaphor certainly works well. I mean, it’s a lot about loneliness. And I think that’s something that people are feeling much more deeply than they ever did. It’s funny for me, because writing the book was a way of working through and accepting my loneliness.

 

TCR: For me as a reader, there is also a theme of control in these stories and one I strongly identified with, as a kid who grew up in kind of a chaotic environment. I thought a funny example was in the essay “Dawn,” in which you have a list of the whole family’s Christmas gifts logged.

MA: Yeah, I would track things. I think I say this in “The Geography of Flight,” the idea that I was anticipating losing so much.  S o I put things in order. I tried to memorize things. I was very good at memorizing things at school, like, “Oh, you want me to memorize all the bones in the human body? Yes.” But yeah, I think that I tried to impose an order on my life as a way to just manage it and control emotions.

 

TCR: Yeah, to control some part of your life. Like, “If I can list Christmas gifts, then I’ve done something. If I can memorize something, then it fits neatly in something.”

MA: And if you can memorize something, it doesn’t change. “If I can keep a list of something like that, that’s not going to change. If I know where everything in my house is,” you know, “my bedroom isn’t going to move.”

 

TCR: I thought your opening, the “Note on Truth” was so beautifully written.

MA: I’m really glad to hear that.

 

TCR: It discusses what it means for something to be “the real truth” and giving ourselves permission to let memories be imperfect and sometimes in disagreement with other people who’ve witnessed our path. I assume that it feels powerful to “own” your own story outside of the stories of other family members, right?

MA: Right.  And the one brother who’s read it so far was like, “I don’t know that I remember all these things. But I’m not going to tell you to write something else.” And the male partner I write about in here, I gave it to him; I don’t think he read it, but he knows he’s in the book, and even he was like, “I wouldn’t tell you to change anything, even if I don’t like what you say about me.” Most of these people I know say, “We might not like it, but we’re not going to tell you to change your life to be nice to us.” And I did change everyone’s names obviously.

 

TCR: As I previously said, I love the way you play with form. Have you written screenplays? Or in the other forms that you incorporate into some essays?

MA: One of my first classes in my MFA was a screenwriting course, and I wrote a television pilot in it. And it won a small contest— the Broad Humor Film Festival— and made it to the second round at the Austin Film Festival. So, I’m not saying I’m an expert screenwriter, but I did write a pilot, and I’m working on turning it into a feature script. And I am also working on a play separately. And then I wrote my one-woman show, the one that’s different than the show in the book. So yes, I have written in all of these forms. Oh, I wrote poetry, as well.

 

TCR: I’m curious about the inspiration behind those forms. I think it’s really cool. When I read “The Geography of Flight,” I thought, “I wish I had thought of that.”

MA: I never really considered myself an experimental writer at all. The “Vanishing Star” piece is one of the earliest things I’ve written. And it has the little definitions. I think I started writing it ten -plus years ago, and I think it came about because I was frustrated. I was like, “I don’t know how to say this.” And so, I just put it in definitions, kind of like, “Well, screw this.” And then a lot of people in my class liked it. So, I would do little things like that, just here and there when I couldn’t figure something out.

And actually, “Stellar Remnants,” the piece about the breakup and the Barbies, was a workshop piece. And I got great feedback. My professor kept saying, “I’m missing this, I’m missing this.” And it was another situation where I started to get mad. And I was taking a screenwriting class at the time. I was like, “Well, fine. Here’s some of it in screenplay.” And then my professor said, “Oh, this is great.”

Then “The Geography of Flight” was another piece that was written for JoAnn Beard’s workshop. It was a similar idea, as in the thesis, where she kind of said, “What are you already doing?” I had all these different pieces. And I really wanted to write an essay that was about my brother and sister being sick in parallel, and why that was why I left. So, it was very ambitious, and I had all these little vignettes and scenes, and I was like, “How do I connect these? I just don’t know.” So, she said, “Well, you can just give each one a heading.” And so, then the report card came to be. And then I was like, “Why don’t I write this as a news article?” So, it started more or less as a frustration. I was like, “Fine, I’ll do this,” and then I started to understand how to use it. Writing those scenes in screenplay format, in “The Geography of Flight” in particular, I wondered how to briefly and succinctly get across “this is what happens every time, every dinner,” and it was like, “Oh, television.” That worked well when I wanted to impose distance, too. I want to get more experimental.

 

TCR:  I really like that it came out of frustration and then it became something beautiful. When you get stuck, if you’re able to find not only a solution but a way to inform other writing and improve it, too—that’s super cool.

MA: Yeah, I think it was kind of like … I’m not a musician, but— when a musician is sort of playing around, and then they just sort of stumble upon a nice sound.

 

TCR: You talk about place in “Quiet” and “Dusk.” I get the impression you don’t miss Montana.

MA: Yeah, there is an essay I’m currently working on that’s far from being done, because I don’t know how to answer that. I was actually planning to go back to Montana to visit the place [where] I grew up, because none of my family lives there anymore. I thought, “I want to go back here as an adult, and I want to see what that feeling is.” But then COVID happened, so I cancelled the trip. I was supposed to go in August of 2020. So no, I don’t miss Montana. But I sometimes wonder if I could have missed it. If I wasn’t running from this trauma. And ultimately, too, it may be less about if I miss Montana versus “New York is where I belong.” There’s just something about being here for me . . .  I can’t imagine being anywhere else. The mentality of this city is where I feel very at home.

 

TCR: Oh, and fun fact, your book cover was featured on Instagram’s “Taylor Swift as Books” account recently, right?

MA: Yeah, it was Swifted.

 

TCR: Awesome.

 

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Emily Schleiger is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts through the Low Residency program at UC Riverside, with a concentration in screenwriting. Her nonfiction has appeared on The Manifest-Station, and humor/satire on McSweeney’s, Reductress, The Second City Network, and more. One of her favorite experiences was reading her cringe-worthy high school writing at a few Chicago Mortified shows. She is the previous nonfiction editor of The Coachella Review.