We spent absurd amounts of time on that book—every spread has a different design and there are intricate photographic essays throughout the book as well. Mashed potatoes fill the margins of a Thanksgiving spread; morphing illustrations of witches on a Halloween one, and so on. The research was extensive and the essays went through many, many drafts.

Although I’d never had gatherings of students at my house before this, for about 1½ years, Alyson, Melanie, Amy, and I spent numerous Saturdays and evenings working at each other’s houses. We got to know each other’s spouses and pets and quirks. We traveled together twice to New York to meet with Monacelli Press. We maintained a hierarchical structure with me as editor and the one who had obviously had the most experience with books and the publishing industry. And the hierarchy was important to maintain; my experience fueled our process. (This was my fourth book, and I’d published scores of essays and articles.)

But nevertheless, even with the dual-generational structure intact, through working with the production team, I escaped even further from the too-good-mother role. And Alyson, Melanie, and Amy escaped from the traditionally subservient good-daughter/ student role; they were not my assistants. Instead within the hierarchy they had large amounts of creative autonomy.

HUMOR HELPS
On breaks during Saturday work binges, we ate together, listened to music, gossiped, and discussed personal topics made more intriguing by our age difference, like Alyson’s pregnancy and my menopause. Alyson is originally from a border town in Texas, Melanie from Trinidad, and Amy from western rural Ohio. I’m from Canton, Ohio. We talked about our hometowns and families. We’re all from different religious backgrounds—which prompted the kinds of comparisons that almost never get delved into in classes. Particularly because we were analyzing the history and meaning of holidays, we had a number of good, serious discussions about religion, which enriched the book—and interested us. And we joked around. A lot.

For me, the easy humor was a breakthrough that helped us evolve from the teacher/student relationships we’d started out with to rare, intergenerational friendships (Alyson, Melanie, and Amy are in their 20s). Our irritation was an aid as well. We would occasionally step on each other’s toes and have to sort things out together, something that virtually never happens in a classroom, with its more rigid hierarchy. As a result we were able to create a book that was something better than any of us could have done on our own. We promoted it together as well—giving group readings at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores, hosting book parties, and speaking on conference panels. We literally shared the microphone. And since the book took three years to create and master’s degrees take two, we continued our friendships and our collaboration after the three graduated. Instead of daughters, I tried thinking of them as younger cousins.

Definitely we felt—still feel—a loyalty and a kinship. Melanie moved on to editing and writing in New York, Alyson is teaching and designing in Chicago, and Amy is teaching and designing in Bowling Green, Ohio. They were always implicitly my younger peers; now as we shared a book and its reviews, they became so explicitly, too.

NEW FRONTIERS
So, what’s the next step? Not surprisingly, we’re trying to do another book together. Melanie and I are coauthoring a cultural-criticism book with Lori Waxman (a former art history graduate student of mine, now a doctoral candidate at NYU) and Anne Higonnet (a professor of art history at Barnard/Columbia and one of my same-age peers and friends) on the representation of girls in art. We’re pitching it to presses now and asking that they hire Amy and Alyson on a freelance basis as the book’s designers. I’m not sure the pitch will work; it’s unusual for writers to approach a publisher with designers they want the press to hire. We’ll see what happens.

In conclusion, for me it’s been crucial to get beyond acting as the idealized good mother in mentoring and teaching—an unrealistic role and a draining one. The first stage has been to emphasize my own work and life, as well as to teach and be supportive of my students. The second stage, one I happened on through the fortunate accident of working in collaboration with graduate students and former graduate students on The Business of Holidays is to build complex intergenerational friendships. For me it’s a new kind of mentoring—and one that, cemented by working together, emphasizes productivity even more than the first stage.

Because Alyson, Melanie, and Amy were trained as designers, they were advanced in their knowledge of and experience with collaborative work processes, and they helped me to realize ours; their design experience was key. And because I learned from them about design and about collaboration, while teaching them about writing, editing, and publishing, this emphasized the two-way nature of our relationships and allowed us, along with frequent laughter and sometimes irritation, to become friends. Developing friendships takes a great deal of time, though. So most of my teaching and mentoring will stay at the first level. After all, I have my own work to do.

The Business of Holidays | The Monacelli Press