Kyria Abrahams
interviewed by Maria Ciampa
In her hilarious, raw, and touching memoir, I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing, poet and stand-up comedian Kyria Abrahams shares stories of her childhood and adolescence as a Jehovah’s Witness in Rhode Island. Raised in a religion that taught her that yard sale objects were possessed, smurfs were demonic, and everyone but Jehovah’s Witnesses would burn in Armageddon, Abraham emerged to write about her experience in an honest, funny, and somehow relatable way.
Her work has previously been featured in the books Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure (Harper Perennial, 2007) and The Book Of Zines: Reading From the Fringe (Owl Books, 1997).
Abrahams recently took time out to talk about her transition from slam poetry to stand-up comedy to humor and memoir writing, and her take on comedy.
First, what made you decide to transition from writing stand-up to writing other genres of humor? Second, what made you decide on a book rather than, say, sketch comedy or a screenplay?
I would think about trying to do Jehovah’s Witness material as stand-up. It wasn’t really working because there was so much back story involved. I’d try tot tell a joke about growing up a Jehovah’s Witness, and I’d mention the Smurfs, then I’d realize that they don’t even know that Jehovah’s Witnesses think that Smurfs are evil.
Doing stand-up about being a JW was sort of like reading a political cartoon from the 1920s, [with a crowd’s reaction of] “I kind of get parts of this. I realize this is funny in context, but I’m not getting the whole thing.” I tried to do a one woman show and put in the Fringe Festival. I showed it to Rich Duncan who was the editor of Jest at the time, and he said, “This is nonsense. This is so confusing.”
I sent it to the Fringe Festival anyway, and of course it was rejected. It was really kind of a jumble. Then, I was out at lunch with Janice Erlbaum, who wrote Girl Bomb. And she asked, “So, when are you going to write your memoir?” And then I just ran with it. It suddenly clicked - when you find a format for yourself, it clicks.”
What other memoirists inspire you?
You do a lot of research when you write the proposal, where you have to explain what books yours is like and what books yours isn’t like. Ultimately I realized I was unlike any other book out there.
One memoir I really like is Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, which is a memoir of African girlhood. It’s about growing up in Mozambique. Her family is white [author Alexandra Fuller] and they are the conquerors, basically. There’s this very odd childhood, where she had to admit that her family is not great. They are going in there to try to take over, and it was really inspiring. There was a lot of material that I didn’t recognize in it, African words and references, and that was inspiring, because I realized there’s a way you can explain something that’s unusual to other people, but without stopping short in the middle of the book.
How many years did you work on I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed? How was it taking time off from stand-up?
The total process was 3 years. I spent a couple months writing a really bad draft. That stuff I thought would go to the Fringe Festival. It was all very angry and disjointed. I got all that anger and self righteousness out of my system. Writing the proposal took a year, and was probably the hardest part. Once you’ve got the proposal done, you’ve got structure, and then it’s easy, because you’ve mapped out what each chapter will be. Then you start writing, and that’s the easiest part - the writing itself. For me, writing a proposal is the hardest thing, because I’m not manager. I’m not good at business. I don’t know why my book is going to sell, I just want to write it. I had to answer questions like “Who’s your target audience?” - I think a little bit of my soul died when I had to use that wording. “The target audience for this book is hip 30-somethings, who really like The Daily Show.” At the time I thought, “I can’t believe I’m putting this down.”
I had some unresolved issues about religion in general, and I just needed to write, and get it out. My first draft was my “Richard Dawkins” draft. It was my atheist, I-hate-religion draft. And when I got that out of my system, I could be more ‘gray area’, as opposed to just angry.
That’s kind of like what stand-up comics go through - they start off angry, and then hopefully go into a more gray area.
Yes, everyone that starts with stand-up is like, “I’m Bill Hicks, let me tell you what’s wrong with politics,” And the audience is like, “No, maybe you can just tell me about your mother, maybe that would work better.”
How similar is your writing voice and your stand-up voice?
They are really different. When I started writing the book, I was starting to transition into telling actual stories onstage about my life.
When I first started doing stand-up, I was this little character on stage, telling random jokes that I made up because I thought they were funny, and when I said it people laughed. But they meant nothing to me. If there was anything political or touching about it, it was more by accident. I wasn’t really comfortable doing that. There was no reason for my stand-up to exist other than people laughing. I didn’t feel like I was saying anything. And with the book, I am actually able to say a lot about how I feel. It’s easier to do that when you’re writing. It’s hard to tell an extended story onstage. It’s much easier to do one-liners. If I start doing stand-up again, I would definitely do more of a longer form. It’s hard to do that.
You reference The Comedy Studio in your book. Can you talk about how your experience performing there and how that influenced you?
The first time I performed at The Comedy Studio, I had been doing slam poetry. I was getting a lot of laughs from the slam poetry audience, so you could say I was “funny for a slam poet”, which is to say I was totally delusional, and thought I was funny. I thought I was doing stand-up. And the first time I did stand-up at the Comedy Studio, people thought I was crazy. I recited a poem. And it was really awkward. I just thought it was crossing genres, or something. After that, I started doing stand-up.
The Comedy Studio is so incredibly supportive of everything, of every phase you go through. It understands that growth period that comics need. They’re okay with you really sucking for six months before you figure something out. And mostly it was about making good friends - people that I’m still really close friends with today and meeting people to work with outside of that
What is next for you?
I am working on a second book, or rather, on the proposal for second book. This time around it’s straight up humor writing. Also I’m a guest blogger on Powells.com. And I’m updating my writing on my web site.
Anything else you want to share with the comedy world?
Just that I feel awkward being in a stand-up comedy magazine. I know what it takes to get out there an hone your craft. There are so many stand-up comedians I enjoy but never be able to be like them. I love Louis CK. He’s my favorite. Patton Oswald is also fabulous. I would never be able to do what they do. I have such respect to the people out there doing it. I’m not doing it.
Maria Ciampa is a writer and comedian in Boston. She is producing the ImprovBoston Women in Comedy Festival, May 13 -16 2009. Visit mariaciampa.com.
For more on Kyria, visit kyriaabrahams.com.