The Big Rumpus: A Mother’s Tale from the Trenches by Ayun HallidaySeal Press (Avalon), 2002

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.


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One response to “The Big Rumpus: A Mother’s Tale from the Trenches by Ayun HallidaySeal Press (Avalon), 2002”

  1. Ayun Avatar

    Hey! Wow! Thank you, daymaker. Hard to believe that Inky’s heading to college… ay yi yi…thank you for getting me to slow down and remember what life used to be like.

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