Dirty Sugar Cookies.

Welcome to the latest stop on Ayun Halliday’s whirlwind “Dirty Sugar Cookies” virtual book tour. Ayun asked if I would do this, and I couldn’t say no. I am powerless to resist the charms of anyone who writes as she does. And if you read “The Big Rumpus” or “No Touch Monkey” or “Job Hopper,” you know what I mean.

As much as I love her (and my love borders on the inappropriate), when I read "The Big Rumpus," it bothered me. Actually, only one phrase bothered me. Two words! But so much so that it colored my opinion of the entire book, even though I laughed and wept throughout the rest of the book. So when she emailed about the tour, I knew I had to mention it. Below is our email discussion on the phrase in question:

Me: “I read The Big Rumpus when Henry was just born, and I literally loved it to pieces. It dissolved from overuse. But I must tell you, there was one part that bugged me. That made me want to write you letters. Or, you know, one letter. It was where you were discussing the joys of nursing and referred to giving a woman giving her baby a bottle 'the hairy eyeball.' (Or you saw someone else giving said hairy eyeball.)

As someone who was completely incapable of nursing, and god did I want to, this made me cry. And I thought, really? What if the woman had adopted? What if she had no breasts? Is the hairy eyeball ever okay?

Unless I misunderstood and this is shorthand for 'the hairy eyeball of understanding.'”

I wrote this and then cowered in a corner of my room, rocking back and forth and petting an old sock, so worried was I that one of my writer-heroes would hate me for my critique.

And here’s Ayun’s response (which I read through my fingers):

“Oh my god, I got so worried when I read the end of your letter that for the first time in years, I reread the entire breastfeeding chapter of the Big Rumpus, terrified that five years ago, I had committed to something flip and nasty, trying to be funny.

Here's what I found at the end of the chapter:

(following an anecdote about a woman getting kicked out of barnes and noble for breastfeeding in the junior aisle) ‘There's rarely trouble when a child drinks from a bottle in public. Occasionally I have seen a mother hunched over her child like someone caught shoplifting as a park bench of proud breastfeeders gives her bottle the hairy eyeball.’

What I wanted to do w/ that sentence is turn the tables and show a scene where a bunch of (breastfeeding) mothers gang up on and exclude another (bottlefeeding) mother for something totally benign and normal and not their business. You know, treat her like she's a stupid little
bush-deer and they're the big, bad-ass jaguars who rule the jungle. To use your phrase, never okay. Never okay for the breastfeeders to judge the bottlefeeders, never okay for the bottlefeeders to judge the breastfeeders, especially not in the land of the free, yo!

So, I wish I'd written the sentence better or longer or something, so that it conveyed what I wanted it to convey, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain myself and bringing the matter up in such a polite, non-hostile way. Actually, this sentence kind of makes ME want to cry, b/c of how unfairly and often the mothers of little children get judged, when they're working their butts off taking care
of their kids.”

Can I tell you how happy this made me? Just like that, whoosh, all the badness got washed away. And while this isn’t a Big Rumpus book tour, I asked Ayun if I could use this exchange, seeing as how misunderstandings seem to be the order of the day around this place. Just as I thought Ayun was a breastfeeding bottle-hater, people seem to think I’m out to murder senior citizens! Or, wait, just laugh at them? Either way, wrong wrong wrong, all of us! Let the healing begin. Or something.

None of this has much to do with Dirty Sugar Cookies, which is described on the back cover (and I concur) as “an omnivorous, rollicking chronicle of culinary awakening.” Part memoir and part cookbook, it served up childhood memories of the Betty Crocker’s New Boys and Girls Cookbook far too vividly (Bunny Salad, anyone?), and after reading it I will never drink grape Fanta ever again, not that I was considering it, but STILL. I’m also looking forward to making Postcoital Pancakes (rowr) or Monkey Brain Tartare (delightfully monkey-free!). And the part about finding her Gran’s rice custard recipe made me cry--which is weird because we all know I’m a heartless senior-loathing robot that was constructed without tear ducts. Ayun can be both hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, and my only remaining problem with her is that she makes it look way too easy. I don’t think she gets enough credit.

Comments

[Heels]

Sold! I will buy her books. Love self-deprecating humor and am endlessly fascinated by the whole moms vs. moms thing, but over it at the same time.

I wrote about the NYT breastfeeding article yesterday. It irked me a bit and by "a bit," I mean a real whole lot.

[Lioness]

Anne in New Jersey, yes, yes, but do you GLARE bcs of it? Maybe we should start a club for women who do not have exceedingly big mammaries and still refrain from the hairy eyeball bcs they are actually quite sane. Our secret salute could be us jiggling our boobs without losing an eye.

[Tim]

FYI: "Ayun" rhymes with "ray gun" and yes, it is Anne transformed by an Indiana accent. I don't know when she changed the spelling, but it wasn't just for her books or zines. When I went to college with her nearly twenty years ago she spelled it that way.

[Anne in New Jersey]

Thanks Tim. I think better to change the spelling and make it a different name than to continue butchering "Anne" with a hideous disyllabic pronunciation.

[Mrs T]

I am also delighted to find a connection to Ayun and you! I've been reading this blog for a couple of months here and there and have been a HUGE fan of Ayun since before my second child was born. She is laugh out loud funny. Do I agree with everything she says or does? No. Do I think less of myself because I do things differently? No. At any rate, she is very entertaining to read and her husband wrote the pretty successful musical "Urinetown". What a talented family!

[Molly]

What? No! It's pronounced Ann! She has a whole thing about it in a back issue of the east village inky. I can't tell you which number it's in. You'll just have to go to ayunhalliday.com and order all of the back issues and read through them until you find it. Her mother named her that.

Also, I think la depressionada was joking. Go read it again.

[alice]

Oh, Molly, if only she were.

[Molly]

Ok, she's not joking.

And perhaps her mother didn't name her Ayun.

Hell, I don't know. But I'm still fairly certain it's pronounced Ann, and that this topic was addressed in EVI. Which you should read!

[Karla]

I know this post is two months old, but I feel compelled to post something in defense of AH. I'm not a mother, and what I learned about mothering from my own mother was what not to do. But I disagree with the posters who think that Ayun is self-aggrandizing, and I really take umbrage with the person who suggested that a "hip mama is a bad mama." What is that supposed to mean? That mothers who don't wear "World's Greatest Mom" sweatshirts suck? That kids are bourgeois, so they should be restricted to Paramus and Stamford?

There are as many ways to be a mother as there are mothers in the world (of course!), and not all of them involve minivans and Disney. (Apologies to those who drive minivans and like Disney--I'm just trying to make a point here.) Yes, the East Village is a ghost of its former gritty self, but for god's sake, don't blame the kids. Blame Guiliani et. al.