Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #414619 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
Of the many stay-at-home mommies who dream of writing the Great American Novel, few actually try; fewer still get published. Though not a novel, The Big Rumpus certainly is the Great American Tale of one woman's schlep through early motherhood--honest, hilarious, and irresistibly naughty. Ayun Halliday, a highly caffeinated and refreshingly immodest city gal, acknowledges that motherhood is pretty much like contending with a cloud of locusts swarming toward one's wheat--then laughs her "heiner" off about it.

Under her gifted muse's care, stories about childbirth, holiday acrobatics (sans religious ties), and raising two kids in a tiny New York apartment read like standup comedy routines; they also give way to bittersweet reflections on her own youth--goofy boyfriends, repressed sexual behavior, and all. Yes, she swears; yes, she delves deeply into issues anatomical, gastronomical, and diaporial. But for hip stay-at-homers who find sustenance in friendships honed at neighborhood playgrounds (not slapped together like cold deli meats at those contrived mommy-and-me meetings), Ayun Halliday might just become the patron saint of blissfully imperfect motherhood. Even mommies who lack Halliday's affinity for "unhusking" their breasts in public will find moments of empathy in this mirthful sprint through life as the family "Milk Monkey." --Liane Thomas

From Library Journal
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.

From Booklist
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

Customer Reviews

big city gal gives birth to great book
Built on the bones of her four-year-old 'zine, The East Village Inky, Halliday's book expands on the experiences of (in her phrase) "a certain transplanted Hoosier mother tromping around Brooklyn, the East Village and several subway lines, more or less joyously burdened with an infant, a coughing three-thumbed three-year-old desperate to kiss him, a big broken orange bag, a Bug's Life lunchbox, an ill-advised plastic sackful of bulk food and a deteriorating stroller." Fans of her quarterly, hand-lettered, forty page 'zine will find the same irreverent, self-deprecating tone in Halliday's tales of rearing her young in the asphalt jungle (though they'll have to settle for a mere half dozen of her endearingly quirky pen-and-ink illustrations). A former massage therapist, off-off-Broadway actress, and waitress, Halliday had feared that her urban hipster life was over after the birth of her first child, India (the eponymous "Inky"). Instead, she's transformed the minutiae of their daily doings into these funky and often touching stories that embrace universal themes (high-spirited preschoolers, sleep deprivation, weaning) while providing a nose-against-the-glass tour of big city life with kids: falafel joints, rooftop parties, and multi-culti friendships forged on tarmacked playgrounds. Mommy voyeurism at its best.

Hip Mama x 2
Rumpus: uproar, chaos, fracas, bedlam...see parenthood.

What Ariel Gore does for the single young mother on welfare in The Mother Trip, Ayun Halliday does for the older mother of young children in an urban setting. The message from the trenches is loud and clear: we may not be June Cleaver, but we love our messy imps.

Ayun Halliday writes with humor and love of her husband Greg and two children, Inky and Milo. Their day-to-day adventures stomping through the streets of the Big Apple make hilarious and heart-tugging reading. Halliday is particularly gifted at capturing the wisdom of her preschool-aged daughter who says things like "Daddy smells bad" as the Dad in question is puking his guts out while Halliday is going into labor with her second child.

Birth and nursing stories aside, Halliday writes from the perspective of someone who has landed on a strange planet and is determined to make the best of it. In other words, she gives voice to the kind of mother I find myself being, which makes her work almost impossible to put down.

I want more RUMPUS!
Okay, I've read something like 20 books about parenting but I related to none of them. They all embraced scrapbooking, stenciling, etc. and I thought 'Who does this?' Then I read The Big Rumpus, a refreshing look at life from a real mother's perspective. Halliday is an intelligent woman who does endless mom tasks, struggles with philosophies of motherhood, and (YAY) nurses her babes while figuring out how to get around NYC. She says things that I've thought but never dared say - (Sigh) I'm not alone! If you are a mom, want to be a mom, care for children, or want to read about a cool woman's adventures in the big city, read this book. If you nurse, have an intact son, co-sleep, wear your baby, and/or know how to laugh at yourself, buy this book. If you are 30-something and want to remember high school, read this book. If you love or hate the holidays, read this book. Heck, I think anyone will find this book touching, funny and just plain entertaining. Buy this book, you'll be glad you did.