BY ANASTASIA HIGGINBOTHAM; INTRODUCTION BY JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER
you
ruined
it
IN THE SUMMER OF 1993, I WAS 23 AND LIVING IN MANHATTAN, AND HAD somehow landed my dream job: being paid to think about feminism (aka editorial assistant at
Ms.magazine). In between photocopying, sending faxes and other now- obsolete tasks, I helped run the popular internship program. We’d received hun- dreds of applications for the fall session, but one hopeful stood out—not just because she had no typos in her cover letter but also because I related to her mul- tisyllabic, easy-to-butcher name. “We should hire Anastasia, um, Higgin-bottom,” I said. My colleague, Susan Buttenwieser, agreed. Anastasia Higginbothamand I clicked hard. We were earnest to the point of hero-
ine worship about Ms., but we also made each other cackle until our stomachs hurt. We even wrote a parody zine called Ms. Demeanor, for which Anastasia drew hilari- ous illustrations and comics. I think of our three-decade friendship as a feminist relationship, by which I mean
it is intimate and generative. Among other roles, we’ve been girlfriends, frenemies, cross-nursing moms (we both had sons in 2005 and 2009) and boosters of each oth- er’s talents. Over the years, I’ve advocated for her unique and brilliant writing and drawings to become books. In fact, I created Dottir Press to publish her children’s book Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, which went on to be a bestseller and con- servative anti-racist boogeyman. We’ve worked together on all six of her books about the ordinary terrible things that commonly happen in childhood, like divorce and the death of loved ones. You Ruined It, a book about incest, is just as honest, poignant and groundbreaking as her other books. It is excerpted, appropriately, here—where our partnership began.
ANASTASIA HIGGINBOTHAM launched her Ordinary Terrible Things children’s book series in 2015 with Divorce Is the Worst. Her second book, Death Is Stupid, was named one of the New York Public Library’s 100 Best Books for Kids of 2016. JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER is the publisher of Dottir Press and has written several books about feminism, including Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics and Abortion & Life.
© 2022 by Anastasia Higginbotham and reprinted with permission from Dottir Press.
Stories for Free Children
Contrary to stereotypes that painted feminists as anti-family, the early editors of Ms. magazine made a concerted effort to include a special section for children in each
issue of the magazine. These “Stories for Free Children” broke the mold of the early ’70s children’s book publishing—with characters who weren’t exclusively straight, white, able-bodied and gender-conforming.
28 | SPRING 2022
www.feminist.org
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