The Big Rumpus: A Mother's Tale from the Trenches

by Ayun Halliday

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.

Genres: Parenting, Memoir, Nonfiction, Humor, Biography Memoir, Feminism, Biography

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 2002

About the author

Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of the long running, award-winning East Village Inky zine and author of the self-mocking autobiographies No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, The Big Rumpus  Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste, and Job Hopper. She collaborated with illustrators Dan Santat on the picture book Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo, and Paul Hoppe on Peanut, a graphic novel for young adults. Luddite vagabonds may remember her as the author of the analog guidebook, The Zinester's Guide to NYC.  She is a regular contributor to Open Culture, and freelances both articles and illustrations to a variety of other publications.

Ayun's latest books are 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.

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

I kind of think I was given this book by a fellow mother when my children were very small. It is a bit weird reading it now, as it was published in 2002 and my kids are EXACTLY the same age as Halliday's - pregnant with our first children, our waters broke on the same July day in 1997. Our daughters were born 2 days apart, both missing the 4th of July by a day, and our sons were born 3 months apart in 2000. So reading about the adventures of toddler life, breast-feeding in public, kids in the backpack and the playground, the joys of writing while your kids are asleep, all feels very retro. And I kept thinking, the whole time I was reading: what are these kids doing now? (Exactly what mine are doing, it turns out: 1) starting college, and 2) going to high school.) The happy upshot of my having read this is that I'm now a subscriber to the author's ongoing handwritten zine.

Everything is so much easier now. I TOO, fellow traveller, I TOO edited a quarterly newsletter out of my kitchen during the first three years of my firstborn's life. OMG WHY DO WE DO THESE THINGS. Clinging to our identities as creative, educated people!

[Asima · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the NYC centric aspect of the book, along with her attitude on how much infant hood can be trying, but think she's trying way too hard to be the cool hipster mom.

[Amy Bergethon]

(From my May 7, 2008 MySpace blog)

A fun read that reminds me how much I appreciate my support system of fellow supermoms. Cheers, girls!

“...I didn't hear from any women about the atlatl. I figured that they had all gone offline to make macaroni and cheese. It's good just to know that they're out there... We might not see eye to eye on the best place to raise our children, but we are all in the same boat.

I used to think this expression meant that we all shared one boat, that your paddles are made lighter by the presence of others. That's not what it means. Even on a good day, my paddles feel like they're filled with buckshot. I'm willing to bet that every other mother's do too. Shortly after you give birth, most of the activities that defined your identity are suspended to let you mix apple juice, deal with somebody else's snot and develop a lot of highfalutin ideas about television. You're not being paranoid or melodramatic if you feel like you're the only grown-up in your boat. The kids never leave the boat either, but what help are they with the paddles?
Their arms are hardly bigger than celery stalks. Also, as delightfully surreal and repeatable as their beginning syntax might be, their conversation cannot sustain you through the tedious stretches. If it weren't for those little kids waiting for you to harpoon a fish so that they can tell you they don't like fish, you'd go right over the gunwales. You can't leave them to fend for themselves, even though they are the ones who got you into this mess. You're stuck choking down soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in that leaky skiff. The inviting blast of an ocean liner taunts you as it glides by, its portholes twinkling like a string of white Christmas lights. Damn the passenger list of merrymakers in bias-cut gowns and party hats. It's always New Year's Eve nineteen-thirty-something on the ocean liner. Too bad you're missing it. Then in the middle of some dark night, when you're up, dog tired, struggling to keep your sleeping children out of the bilge water, you notice another crappy little boat a few yards out. And another. And another. The ocean is fairly crawling with boats as crappy and little as yours. Each one holds a mother tethered to a baby, a sleeping toddler or a jacked-up three-year-old still gibbering from an ill-advised late-afternoon sugar fix. We're all in the same boat, all right. It smells like mildewed life preservers. There are millions of these boats in the sea. We shout to each other across the waves.
Nobody will get offended if you have to interrupt her midsentence to seize your daughter by the ankle before she dives after a birthday party favor she dropped overboard, possibly on purpose.”

[Liane Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twenty three years after reading this book, I saw the word rumpus in another book and remembered. Ayun Halliday's writing was everything to me waaay back, when I was still working toward my 10 year motherhood pin. Times change, but to this former Milk Monkey, The Big Rumpus will always be a solid 5 star pick.

Disclosure: I received a galley copy of TBR from Amazon and was paid to write the official editorial book review in 2002.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

hilarious and relatable

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t have kids or want kids, but this parenting memoir was a whole lot of fun. It’s episodic and loosely chronologically/thematically structured, and I would maybe have liked more of a narrative arc, but it’s well-written and very New York-y and often laugh-out-loud funny, like when Halliday describes breastfeeding on the subway, looking up at Dr. Zizmor ads to attempt to avoid interaction with fellow passengers, while the guy next to her loudly and enthusiastically gives her props for breastfeeding rather than using formula. Or when her first kid, who’s been weaned before the birth of her second, surprises her in bed one morning by pretending to nurse. Halliday finds amusement in the whole enterprise of parenting, including her own expectations and ideals: there’s a great section about needing to provide her pre-schooler with valentines to bring to school, and wanting them to be homemade, but also wanting them to conform to certain aesthetic/artistic standards, rather than being construction-paper hearts covered with globs of glitter glue. Not that it’s all laughs: Halliday writes about the physical experience of childbirth, and about her first child having to spend ten days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and about the isolation of being a new mom suddenly removed from the downtown theatre world in which she used to be a more active participant. Excellent illustrations from Halliday’s zine, the East Village Inky, serve as section dividers, and the book ends with a really sweet letter to her baby son.

Full disclosure: I’m Facebook friends with the author, having met her on the 2011 Manhattan WonderWalk, but that's got nothing to do with my enjoyment of this book.

[Terri Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this book and wish I'd had it about 8 years ago. Reading it then would have likely helped me to feel less alone and flustered amidst the craziness and wonder of full-time parenting. I actually felt overwhelmed when I first started reading. Now that my babies are older and I am well out of the trenches of constant exhaustion, tedium and responsibility, it was hard to go back. Much as I am thankful for those days and loved being able to be home with my babies (and not to minimize other people's experience of PTSD) re-visiting this time in my life in such exquisite detail was a little PTSD-ish for me. At least initially. Then I felt mostly nostalgic. Halliday says what she thinks and feels and doesn't censor herself to fit into the idealized and mostly rigid idea of motherhood that one finds everywhere else. This I appreciate immensely. Whether or not you agree with her parenting style, I think all moms can relate to the overwhelming love she describes for her children as well as the struggles (internal and logistical) that come with trying to do this parenting thing well.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is ayun's first book, & it is all about parenting her children, inky & milo. it was written several years ago, when milo was still a baby & inky was just starting elementary school. it's amazing to think how much older her kids are now. i read it because i like her zine, "the east village inky," all right. not being a parent myself, maybe i don't get quite as much out of parenting memoirs as i could, but the book is entertaining, has some laughs, has some sad stories (like the one about inky being born & ending up in the neo-natal intensive care unit & how terrifying that was for ayun). i re-read it every now & again when i want to read something kind of goofy & funny & unchallenging. ayun also writes a column in "bust" magazine (or did?), which i think is called "mother superior". if you have read it & you liked it, you will like this book.

[Truce · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this would be better than Job Hopper but it's agressively, beat-you-over-the-head-with-its-hipness hip. Ayun seems to be a human representation of the satirical site stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, and a lot of the ethnic references in her writing read more like, "I can't be racist -- some of my best friends are black/Asian/Latino!" The writing in the book is all over the place and her stream-of-consciousness is hard to follow. Also, she talks a pretty tough game about not being one of those hyper-judgmental alpha moms, being in the trenches, living in a dirty apartment, and not being able to afford a nanny. But she's still a stay-at-home mom, sending her children to private school, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

[Rhiannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read in a while that I wasn't trying to teach myself from. And what a needed escape! Ayun made me laugh over and over with her retelling of life as a stay-at-home-mom much like my own. Her tales of life with Inky and Milo in a tiny New York apartment closely parallel the life I remember with toddler Maia and baby Terran. At some points I laughed so hard that I had tears on my eyes, yet never anyone around to share it with who I thought would understand. So, if you're a mom, I highly recommend this book. And maybe when I'm more awake, I will write a more thorough review. I plan to read more of Ayun Halliday's books as soon as I can...

[Michel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. Got this as a gift. I did make it through to the end, but wish I hadn't bothered. This book skips all over the place and is mostly pointless. She attempts humor but doesn't quite there. I have kid of my own so I expected this to "hit home" way more than it did. It was like listening to the someone's thoughts floating around their head... all over the place and not that exciting if you aren't that person.

The only part that kept my attention was the part about giving birth to the second child. The rest... eh, glad it's over!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished reading this. It was an interesting piece of "mommy-lit". I'm not even sure how to describe it, as it is pretty much just a personal account of the author's life as a stay at home mom of one and then two children, written in topic based vignettes. I enjoyed it in a lot of places because I could completely relate to the subject matter but it was expressed in a way that was very humorous.

[Allison Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed my way through this book, all the time nodding with understanding as Halliday captures what it means to be a parent, a mother. Clearly written by someone who loves the calling, this book humorously explores the dark underbelly of motherhood and all of the exasperation and anguish that, as every parent knows, go hand in hand with the moments of joy and love.

As a new(ish) mother, this book was an instant favorite.

[Ronni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this back when my baby was tiny and sleepless, and I remember being so thankful for it, and wanting to talk about all the things I loved about it, and today I found I never even added it to my books. Can I remember what details made it so important to me? No, but I can remember how it made me feel. Now I want to dig up all the ancient issues of East Village Inky at the DZL so I can better appreciate them now that I have some momming under my belt.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I read this book, I haven't felt compelled to read any others from the burgeoning shelves of moms' memoirs out there. Ayun is great, human, funny, an amazing writer. Worth the purchase price just for her description of being acosted on the A-train while she is nursing her toddler, by a rough-looking guy who loudly and enthusiastically encourages her public breastfeeding.

[Sonya Feher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halliday's depiction of motherhood is far from a three martini playdate. Thank you for that. Her baby-wearing, water-birthing, playdates on East Village playgrounds, and East Village Inky zine are edgy and real. This is what happens when the alternative theater chick grows up and has babies. Big fun.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author seems like somebody who'd be fun to hang out with. This book is funny and poignant and brimming with motherly love. On the other hand, it does have some crappy parts--like when the author compares her baby son's penis with that of an old boyfriend, and all the times that she mixes alcohol and breastfeeding.

[Johanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! I highly recommend for anyone even considering children in their future. The true life tales of Ayun, her three-thumbed (no, really) daughter Inky, son Milo, sainted husband Greg and a nymphomaniac cat named Jambo and their adventures in the East Village are a hilarious and honest look at parenting.

[sarah jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely side-splitting. I never knew what a mucus plug was until I read this book. great for parents or for anyone choosing not to be a parent (like myself) who is fascinated with and awed by motherhood.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this were a little smug in a hipper-than-thou sort of way, but for the most part, Ayun Halliday's stories about having and raising her kids in the East Village are utterly hilarious and unpretentious.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of The East Village Inky and was happy to stumble across Halliday's memoir. Her voice is an original and hilarious one, straight from the underbelly of motherhood. Rings true, and brings back both the horrors and the delights of those early, fugue-like days.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, funny book about having and raising kids. In the beginning, I was afraid the author might be too hip and cool for me to relate to, but it turns out she's a down-to-earth woman with an enviable ability to approach parenting with a sense of humor. This book would help any new mother feel sane.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me realize that I can actually be a mother. I never had a lot of faith in that before. It also made me want to have a baby in a natural birthing center (but still sneak in some heavy duty drugs).

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, my favorite mama book! I love her style, her stories...she's the mother I want to be when I grow up. Makes me want to move to NYC in hopes of having delightful wacky adventures like her and the fam.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briiliant! Ayun Halliday's observations on early parenthood are entertaining and insightful at the same time. One of the best early years "mom memoirs" I've ever read, and a great escape with lots of laughs as well. A must-read for attachment parenting/LLL/Mothering magazine type moms.

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fun mommy book.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read, won't teach you a ton but will help you know there are others out there.

[HeavyReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was really funny and I enjoyed reading it, even though I don't have kids and never will.

[mynameissmith]

Well.... I'm into the idea of starting a zine now.

[cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

really, she's like the david sedaris of mommy-memoirs!