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.
I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and came of age at the height of the preppy craze. For some unfathomable reason, my grandparents had a subscription to The New Yorker and every week, I'd paw through it daydreaming about a glamorous future where I'd be a celebrated stage actress living in sin with some hot, devoted trumpet player in a Greenwich Village loft with a skyline view that I've since learned is only possible from Brooklyn or New Jersey.
After graduating from Northwestern University with an impractical, expensive degree in guess what, I embarked on an exciting career as a waitress, with occasional time-outs for globetrotting of the dirty backpack, banana pancake variety.
In 1988, I joined The Neo-Futurists, a Chicago theatre company notable for presenting 30 original plays in the course of 60 minutes and ordering pizza for the audience whenever the show sold out. Greg Kotis auditioned for the ensemble in 1991 and fortunately, we cast him because otherwise, I might not have married him and moved to New York City where we rented a 340-square-foot apartment in the East Village for $1150 a month.
Boy, were we surprised when a big old stork swooped down a year later, especially since the baby it dropped off had three thumbs and required immediate treatment in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
On Inky's first birthday, I put out the first issue of my zine, The East Village Inky which was and still is written and illustrated entirely by hand because computers tend to take a digger when I'm around (This Web site was engineered by Dave Awl, an old buddy from the Neo-Futurists.)
After a few years, the shadow of the stork fell upon us again and we moved to Brooklyn. Milo was born underwater so lickety split, he almost came out in the Tompkins Square playground.
Greg wrote Urinetown! (the Musical) which, to everyone's amazement, made it all the way to Broadway and now he's such hot doodie he might burn you, so don't touch him! Don't tell him I called him hot doodie either because he's rigorous about his modesty and I already drew a couple of pictures in The East Village Inky where he dances around naked.
I eschewed housekeeping and wrote a book called The Big Rumpus so I could remember what life was really like when my children were small and so that you'd have something to purchase in bulk for Mothers Day and every other major holiday.
Then I had to write another book in case you pride yourself on hating kids or break out in hives at the thought of reading another birth story. My second book is called No Touch Monkey! The ranking brass in the East Village Inky guerilla marketeering squad think it'd make an excellent present for everyone who received a copy of The Big Rumpus from you last year, not to mention the special dirty backpacker in your life. If an Amazon customer reviewer is going to hate on any of my books, that's the one! Boy, is it ever! I'll fix their wagons someday.
Gosh, playing in the ashtray of my tattered memories was such fun, I started rooting through all the crappy day jobs I held while pursuing an elusive dream of life on the golden-but-not-nearly-wicked-enough stage. If you, too, have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously low-wage fortune, reading Job Hopper is going to feel like taking off your girdle. If you've been pulling down six figures since the day you graduated B-school summa cum laude, reading Job Hopper is going to feel like taking off someone else's girdle.
The most recent autobiographical dough to come pumping out of the template is Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste. It's a love letter to everything I've ever eaten and a few of the things I wish I hadn't. I might add that it's got one of the gnarliest indexes I've ever seen, short of The Merck Manual. It made me so hungry, I had to start a food blog just to justify some of the crazy things I've stuffed in my pie-hole over the years. (I eventually realized that blogging's not for a hard core zinester like me, but you can find the archives online if you search for "Dirty Sugar Cookies Eggplant Tofu" which is what I always do when I'm trying to remember how to make my husband's favorite recipe.
In 2008, Hyperion published a picture book that had been knocking around in my rusty old brain pan since my then-4-year-old daughter observed that there's "Always Lots Of Heinies at the Zoo". True enough! She's twelve now. You do the math. Anyway, it's illustrated by Dan Santat, and it has a Bossa Nova beat, in case you want to dance to it. I'm particularly proud of the line about the junk in Ms. Elephant's supplemental trunk, and my favorite illustration is the one on the back cover.
The gestation of my latest book rivaled the pregnancy of an elephant, but, like any proud parent, I am besotted with the results. The Zinesters Guide to NYC is an anecdotal, illustrated, low budget, highly participatory guidebook to New York City, the last wholly analog specimen of its kind. Stephen Colbert says it's truly funny, truly affordable and that if he could still walk the streets of New York among his People, this is the guide he would use.
And not that I can plan this far ahead, but apparently the good folks at Schwartz and Wade can, because they're publishing Peanut, my graphic novel about a girl who fakes a peanut allergy under the mistaken impression that it will improve her social standing at her new school. Paul Hoppe is hard at work illustrating it, even as we speak. (He better be!)
That photo is what I wear when battling the haters who write scathing reviews of No Touch Monkey. As you can see, I am also enjoying a cup of Official Writer Drink.
If you'd like to learn more about what's shaking in Ayun layund, or find out how to order the East Village Inky, or see some old timey photos from back in the day, I've got a website. I named it after myself. No, not Ayun Junior. Ayun Halliday Dot Com! Yes, we can be Facebook friends too.
Dare to be Heinie! And thank you for reading!
xo,
Ayun
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