An Interview with Ayun Halliday

by Jennifer Savage

When it comes to writing about motherhood, Ayun Halliday is the perfect combination of artsy New York sophistication and Midwest down-to-earth modesty, both in her smash hit zine, the East Village Inky or in her new book The Big Rumpus.

In the following interview, Ayun shares some of the hows and whys involved with The Big Rumpus.

Jennifer: Why a book? What prompted you to make the leap from a quarterly zine to an almost 300 page book?

Ayun: There is the desire to reach a larger audience and to gain the kind of professional credibility that a handwritten zine with a circulation of less than a thousand does not bestow in this unfair world. Plus, I reckon writing a book makes it easier to write more books. I'm not just a reader I'm a book lover. Since childhood, I have felt the pull of the used bookstore, the thrill of discovering something wonderful, possibly forgotten, but entirely new to me, wondering who the previous owner was and under what circumstances she or he parted company with this particular volume. I like the idea of my words floating away into the world like that, like Charlotte the spiders thousands of babies.

Jennifer: You have two children under the age of five. How the heck did you manage to write a book?! I know you've said that you're good about meeting your EVI deadlines because doing the zine keeps you sane, and I can see getting it done in bits and pieces while the babes sleep in coffee shops, but writing a book seems to demand much larger uninterrupted blocks of time. Again, how the heck did you do this?

Ayun: I stick to an extremely high fat diet.

But seriously, folks, I was green enough to assume that the bulk of the text already existed in the form of essays I had written for Hip Mama,
Brain, Child, Bust, and the East Village Inky. By the time my editor informed me that it wasn't quite that cinchy, I had signed the contract and blabbed my good fortune all over town. Fortunately, I can write almost as quickly as I talk and, unlike my husband who is a playwright and a perfectionist as far as his words go, I hammer out a first draft and gaily send it off, full of imperfections and worms. The month before deadline, I hired a babysitter for about nine hours a week and that helped. I wrote in a local restaurant and that helped too-- no child or phone caller could interrupt me. The writing was a piece of cake mostly. Having to enter corrections for the final draft, actually rereading what I
had said-- that was work.

I turned the book in on September 10. Less than twenty four hours later, I was desperate to get the manuscript back, horrified that people might not realize there was at least half a year of turn around time before the final manuscript makes it to the bookstore, that readers would think I was this callow, self involved bitch, making cheap wisecracks rather than describing the unbelievable nightmare originating just across the East River.

Jennifer: How did it alter the sense of accomplishment I'm assuming you felt when you turned in your completed manuscript?

Ayun: The period of publicly dancing around tooting my own horn was very brief. I still felt proud of finishing my book.

Jennifer: And even without those horrific events, how did/do you write about yourself without getting overly caught up in self-involvement? Why do you think people so enjoy reading about you and your life and how do you avoid ego-tripping on it?

Ayun: Let it never be said that I'm not incredibly self-involved, but hopefully it's tethered to my interest in other people's stories, both fictional and real. I try to leaven the proceedings with a heaping helping of self mockery. I know the Demi Moore pregnant nudie shots are a stale reference by now, but as a mother, wouldn't you rather read about sleep deprived, flabby abdomened me flapping around my small, messy apartment trying to find something to scoop the babyshit out of the bathtub than be subjected to a glamorous, unattainable ideal? I suspect that the depictions of Inky and now Milo are as big of a draw as my own first-person narrative. They're the stars, the Gatsbys, and I'm just Nick living next door, reporting on the wonderful parties going on in the big house with all the lights on. What mother can't relate to that? Maybe some of the small moments that are captured in EVI and The Big Rumpus - things like the little kid demonstrating how to brush the washcloth and the language of small children ( why not do you ever let me do the stuff I want to do!? ) are close enough to universal that it functions as sort of a baby book for women who are way too busy to keep up to date baby books. (The EVI is my kids baby book. I'm resigned to that now) By the way, I fully intend to ego trip on all the kind fan mail I have received when I am an old lady and don t have to spend so much time chasing these little kids around.

Jennifer: What are you hoping for as far as audience reaction? Who do you envision as your readers (if you do envision them while you're writing)? What do you want people to feel after reading The Big Rumpus?

Ayun: I hope that people with children will find that it reflects their experience accurately and with humor. I hope that people who are not and perhaps have no desire to be parents will find it compelling as opposed to insufferably cutesy bootsy. I hope that the book will fall into the hands of women who are raising their children according to a very mainstream model and that it will turn them into bootie shaking, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, Barney bashing, zine reading, Bad Housekeeping she wolves like you and me. Actually, I've never seen your house.

Jennifer: At first glance you seem to leave no stone unturned, no poop undrawn... how did you determine what to chronicle and what to leave out? How sensitive are you to the feelings of the folks included in your book? Where do you draw (no pun intended) the line as far as personal sharing? Or do you?

Ayun: I am very thankful to my editor at Seal Press, Leslie Miller, for chopping great chunks of text and leaving me with a few loaded sentences, such as "I come from a fractured and repressed family," which has been remarked upon by Greg and the two close female friends who have seen the book thus far.

A few years ago, I acted recklessly, reporting in print upon a tragedy to which I was I was a self involved witness. My account of my observations had the mortifying effect of making an unthinkable situation even worse and not a day goes by that I don t regret my choice to tell another family's story without gaining their permission. The people who appear in The Big Rumpus can basically be divided into four or possibly five categories:

1. Greg and our children; 1A. Greg's brother's family and my mother-in-law; 2. My parents and stepfather; 3. Schoolmates and adolescent love interests; and, 4. Dear friends now. Sprinkled with a few neighbors and fellow nursery school parents. I modified the valentine Inky receives from the pusher/biter in her nursery school class because I didn't want his parents to feel they were immediately recognizable due to the materials of their creative homemade valentine. In regard to my lack of youthful sex education, my mother might feel a tad red in the face, but hopefully this will be offset by her pride in her only child's accomplishments. I put my lengthy acknowledgements page upfront on purpose.

Finally, I am wondering if those adolescent boyfriends and the childhood close friend (whose name I changed) in the infamous scene where we're drawing naked people and she nails me for not knowing what balls are will come by a copy somehow. As an extrovert, I think I would love to be immortalized in someone else's memoirs.

Jennifer: Bee Lavender brought up the fact that you have
lived and worked semi-underground for a long time as a neofuturist, Greg doing his fringefest stuff, and now suddenly your family narrative has been elevated to book form and Greg has a hit musical on Broadway: Urinetown. How has going legit has made a difference in your life/work?

Ayun: Thus far, it s meant a little more access to me and a lot more access to Greg. He gets the accolades of celebrities, offers of projects that sound pretty unappetizing from an artistic point of view, attention in the mainstream press and people gasp when they hear he wrote Urinetown. (And it s very inspirational - he holds fast to an unfailingly modest, gracious demeanor). For The Big Rumpus to come anywhere close to Urinetown s success is a bit of a pipedream. I was reading a review in the New York Times Book Review of A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk, an English novelist. I haven't read the book. Word is it's an angry memoir of motherhood (she wrote it during her second pregnancy - got knocked up when her first child was 6 months). The reviewer starts out by saying that for a serious female writer writing a memoir of motherhood seems like career suicide. I wanted to choke that reviewer! Then I wanted her to review The Big Rumpus! Then I wanted to choke her some more! The greatest, most above ground professional accomplishment of my 37 years and she's reducing it to pap in one sentence as she reviews somebody else's book!

Jennifer: It's hard to pick the parts that most affected me-- so much of the book provoked so many emotions-- but both "Neo Natal Sweet Potato" and "Spare Us" brought me to tears. I think "Spare Us" in particular because you talk about the most terrifying aspect of motherhood, one that I try hard to NOT think about, actually. One nobody ever really warns aspiring mothers about. Sure, people go on and on about how much you'll love the baby, how you should nap when the baby naps (ha!), maybe the braver ones will even bring up the violent feelings that can result from being in constant physical and emotional demand, but I've never read (until now) a piece that named the fear of Something Horrible Happening so bluntly. And eloquently. And, um, I suppose I meant to actually ask a question here...so what were you thinking as you wrote that chapter? What, emotionally, did you go through with that? With the whole book for that matter? Did the act of writing distance you from the immediacy of the thoughts? Or did you relive the experiences as you recorded them? Or what?! What parts of the book most stand out for you and why?

Ayun: First of all, thank you. With Greg in Turkey for a month, the above question/compliment will give me the energy to get the kids dressed, fed and to Inky's nursery school on time tomorrow.

"Spare Us" was born of my insomnia and a thread on hipmama, started by a woman who was disgruntled by television's exploitation of children's deaths. Although I shared this poster's distaste for charred teddy bears and swelling background strings, I had to stick up for the death of children as some of the most moving, gripping situations of drama, fiction, and history. I couldn't sleep and rather than thumb through the New Yorker as Greg and Milo slept beside me, I got up and blurted out that chapter, pretty much as it appears in the book, getting up to rifle through my copy of MacBeth, so I could be accurate in quoting MacDuff, whose children and wife are slain by hired assassins. That chapter and "Waiting for Milo" which is the blow by blow of Milo's birth are my favorites.

Writing does not distance me-- it grounds me in the material and frequently I come out of my writing fog to realize I've been sitting in a cafe, grimacing and beaming, my eyebrows wiggling around my face like bagworms as I chew through the material.

It was funny, not long after the final manuscript had been turned in, my friend Karen who attended Milo's birth sent me the CD she had made of the last half hour or so of my very short labor and I realized that I had drawn out certain parts (the scenes where I'm pushing and we become like a machine-- I have our machine repeating its cycle much longer than it did in reality) and that I had made myself much nastier than I actually seemed to be when I chastised Greg for asking questions about the CD recorder's quality when I was having a contraction. There's a little bit of Rashomon going on.

And then pieces that seem important to me who lived through it all get left on the editing room floor. For instance, two days before Milo was born, a brownstone a few blocks away exploded due to a gas leak and three people were killed and there were helicopters and smoke and it cast a pall over the neighborhood and our mood. In the scene where Greg and Karen have food poisoning and Inky and I strike out onto the humid dirty streets to buy them Tylenol and iced coffee, my most vivid recollection is the full color photos of the destroyed brownstone on the covers of all the tabloids for sale outside the Smith St. bodegas. Leslie, my editor and the proof reader both felt that this episode sort of bogged down the action and also was a bummer (it was!) that hurt rather than enriched the story. I think their inclinations were correct. The readers won't miss it. But to me, I have to remember that there s a piece missing from the official record, that official record anyway. It made it into the as ever unedited East Village Inky account of Milo s birth!

This year, I've felt most proud of the recognition that has come directly from the small press, the zine world. The East Village Inky just won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Best Zine. It feels best to be acknowledged by the people doing what you re doing of their own free will, rather than because you have the best publicist or the most expensive ad campaign. When I saw BUST's small display ad in the back of the Utne Reader that mentioned my name as one of three
contributors, my heart (and possibly head) swelled with pride!

I have benefited enormously from Urinetown's success: Greg has to watch the children much more now that he doesn't have a day job! Ah, the glamorous life of a Broadway playwright.

Jennifer: What about that: with you and Greg both being creative and successful and all, how do the two of you divide writing time with child/home responsibilities?

Ayun: We have a jerry-rigged system of one of us taking the morning with the kids and then handing them off to the other around lunchtime. The next day we switch. It's in constant threat of collapse. I think each of us suspects the other has the sweeter deal. I take care of the kids a bit more but Greg is quick to remind me that he lacks the secret weapon of breastmilk, so his shifts can have less nap, more yelling. Neither of us wants to clean the house and both of us harp about the domestic disorder - Greg likens it to a leaky boat constantly taking on water. It barely works. The most important things are to make sure that the time without children is used productively and that as a couple, Greg and I don't get too hung up on keeping score of who cleaned the bathroom last (it was me) and who only got to have one hour away from the kids yesterday (me again! Me!).

Jennifer: Speaking of Inky, how long do you think you can write about Inky before she demands a percentage? Or at least some creative control?

Ayun: Or tells me to quit writing about her? I'd be happy to give her a few pages, the way Greg gets his say with Advice to the Fathers. A reader was telling me about the pain of second grade girls social pecking order which she is going though with her daughter and said she can't wait to see that covered in the East Village Inky.

Jennifer: While the zine and the book subjects obviously overlap, the EVI not only bears Inky's name but seems to revolve more so around her adventures, while The Big Rumpus really glows with Milo-love. Do you worry about sibling rivalry-type issues happening in the future -- your children waving different publications at each other, upset about who got more of what kind of coverage?

Ayun: Sounds like a recipe for the cat fight of the century! No, it didn t occur to an only child like me. A friend remarked the other day that the "Mashnote to Milo" chapter at the end of the Big Rumpus really struck her. It's been reported that that's the chapter that gets all of the mothers all gushy and tearful, so I readied myself for the praise I was sure was coming, but she said that she had read it as the oldest of several siblings and was really upset, wondering how it might make Inky feel. Then she switched gears and said that maybe it would be a nice little something for Milo to have all to himself. I have a feeling that that chapter is more about how a mother loves a baby, than how Ayun
loves Milo - I talk about his little heiner becoming big and covered in pimples and hair. Let's just hope that their relationship continues on as it has for close to two years now - one that startles brotherless, sisterless me with its good humored fondness, generosity and understanding.

Jennifer: What are some of your favorite books? Any particular place you've drawn inspiration from?

Ayun: I'm reading a great book right now, or I would be if I could find where Milo has hidden it, The Undiscovered Country by Samantha Gillison, whose son was in Inky's nursery school class last year it's gorgeous, powerfully observed fiction about a family who goes to Papua New Guineau on an ill-advised research trip that the wife funds when her husband's grant doesn't come through. I love Carson McCullers; The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has held up to repeated readings. I am a voracious reader, and thank god I have insomnia, because it s what allows me to read as much as I do with these little kids.

There are certain passages I have loved and carry in my mind. The part in Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson where the aunt takes the lonely young girl to this secret place where the sun never melts the frost from the trees and the grass and the author speaks of longing feeding you wild strawberries! There is a lovely ode to a baby son that I cut out of Harpers and pasted into a notebook I kept while pregnant with Inky-- it is from Marin mon coeur, a novel I haven t read by a Belgian writer named Eugene Savitzkaya. For autobiographical observations about parenthood, I have enjoyed Fruitful by Anne Roiphe, The Mother Trip by
Ariel Gore, The Blue Jays Dance by Louise Erdrich and The Kid by Dan Savage, which is really more about the process of adopting his son with his boyfriend.

Actually, Dan Savage was a real inspiration because his book (which I
found on the sidewalk, set out for the garbage!) is so damn funny it had me laughing out loud and for some reason, women rarely seem this funny when writing about their children. I went back and reread Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. Someone had given it to me when I was pregnant with Inky and I had thought the author was obnoxious and grating, hamming it up, trying to be cute. On the second read, as the parent of two, I found it hilarious and self-mocking in a truly endearing way. Of course I am very inspired by self-published zines and I love underground comics, particularly Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez and Hate by Peter Bagge.

Jennifer: Plans for a sequel? For the future?

Ayun: I'd like to write a novel but dang, that's hard! I hope that people buy the book, read it, love it, and send me some mail. I'd like it to become a rolling stone.

For more information, check out

http://www.ayunhalliday.com

Jennifer Savage is a 32-year-old mother of three, the href="http://www.arcataeye.com" Arcata Eye Scene Editor and a freelance writer. Her essay, "Learning to Surf," appears in Breeder: Voice of A New Generation of Mothers. This is her third interview for hipMama.com.