The Big Rumpus: A Mother's Tale from the Trenches (Live Girls) - Softcover

Halliday, Ayun

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580050719 ISBN 13: 9781580050715

Publisher: Seal Press, 2002

Synopsis

Twenty years ago a woman named Erma Bombeck brought the suburban family out of the closet—dust bunnies and all. Her honest, hilarious accounts of family life, where the “grass is always greener over the septic tank,” became more than mere books; they became a philosophy. Ayun Halliday is a new generation’s urban Bombeck. Creator of the wildly popular parenting zine The East Village Inky, Halliday’s words and line drawings describe the quirks and everyday travails of a young urban family, warts and all. Honest in her parenting foibles and fixed in her opinions on public breast-feeding and the perfect Halloween costume, Halliday’s wry observations on daily life validate the complex, absurd wondrousness that is the life of the unpaid caregiver. Reflecting on her daughter’s third thumb, declawing the cat, and debating her son’s circumcision, she writes: “My family has a highly complex relationship to amputation.” On appropriate knowledge for children: “All Inky wants to talk about is the murder of John Lennon. I think it’s my fault.” On lice: “Head lice were outed on the children’s program Arthur this year in an effort to de-stigmatize the problem. I guess I’m glad that lice have hit the mainstream, though what’s next for Arthur and his pals? Heroin addiction?” On family holidays: “Danged if it isn’t true—you really cannot recreate the Christmases of your childhood. I can’t even recreate the Christmases of my teens.” It is in the details that The Big Rumpus will delight. Halliday manages to capture a voice that so many of today’s parents hear in their own heads, in a way that is absolutely unique yet familiar. The Big Rumpus marks the debut of a major new talent who has formulated a whole new set of “operating instructions” for today’s families.

About this title

About the Author

Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of the long running, award-winning East Village Inky zine and author of nine books, including the self-mocking autobiographies No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late and, most recently, Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto and its interactive companion Creative, Not Famous Activity Book: An Interactive Idea Generator for Small Potatoes & Others Who Want to Get Their Ayuss in Gear. She lives in East Harlem with the playwright Greg Kotis, where she is hard at work on a dystopian novel set in her childhood branch library.

Reviews

Becoming a mother is a scary proposition. Now throw in strollers on subway stairs, crowded sidewalks, and approximately eight million New Yorkers. This is the life of an urban mother, and the fear of those who will soon carry that title is palpable. The Big Rumpus puts a comic slant on what it's like to be a "hipmama." Halliday, the often bumbling metro mother of two, is no stranger to documenting her life in the concrete jungle. She is the proud creator of the two-year-old quarterly zine, the East Village Inky, named after her daughter India (Inky), upon which this book expands. Her strong narrative voice evokes the power and demands of her life and the city in which she lives. Essential reading for all urban mothers.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The lively personality of Halliday's quarterly zine, The East Village Inky, comes through in this rambunctious little book that takes a hard-eyed and hilarious look at full-time motherhood in the city. Halliday ponders everything from birthing centers versus hospitals to the politics and sociology of breast-feeding in public in her rambling recollections of life with her two young children: India, better known as Inky, and Milo. In between coaxing, diaper-changing, and socializing with an eclectic group of neighborhood mothers and children who meet in the playground, Halliday steals every available moment and every available occurrence and utterance for the sake of her publication. She has a refreshingly irreverent but joyous voice for describing the everyday chores of motherhood. There's no helpful advice on how to get baby food stains out of clothing here, just plenty of heartfelt and humorous observations on the joys of motherhood and the constant self-chastisement for not meeting self-imposed ideals. The book also includes a few of the cartoons that are featured in Halliday's zine. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Seal Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580050719
• ISBN 13: 9781580050715
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288