My Childhood in Pieces : A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy

My Childhood in Pieces

A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy

Hardcover | 3 June 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


$54.50

or 4 interest-free payments of $13.63 with

 or 

Available: 3rd June 2025

Preorder. Will ship when available.

From the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.

From the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.

"My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water. . . . They didn't expect an entire book," Hirsch says in the "prologue" to this glorious festival of knife-sharp observations. In microchapters-sometimes only a single scathing sentence long-with titles like "Call to Breakfast," "Pay Cash," "The Sorrow of Manly Sports," and "Aristotle on Lawrence Avenue," Eddie's gambling father, Ruby, son of an iron smelter, schools him and his sister in blackjack; Eddie's mom bangs pots to wake the kids to a breakfast of cold cereal; Uncle Bob, in the collection business, is heard threatening people on the phone; and nobody suffers fools. In this household, Eddie learned to jab with his left and cross with his right, never to kid a kidder, and how to sneak out at night.
Affectionate, deadpan, and exuberant, steeped in Yiddishkeit and Midwestern practicality, Hirsch's laugh-and-cry performance animates a heartbreaking odyssey, from the cradle to the day he leaves home, armed with sorrow and a huge store of poetic wit.

More in Poetry

Gutsy Girls : Love, Poetry and Sisterhood - Josie McSkimming
Doggedly Onward : A Life in Poems - Pam Ayres

RRP $55.00

$39.90

27%
OFF
Dropbear : Winner of the 2022 Stella Prize - Evelyn Araluen
The Prophet : Penguin Classics Hardcover - Kahlil Gibran

RRP $32.99

$30.25

The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump - Rob Sears
Heroes : The myths of the Ancient Greek heroes retold - Stephen Fry
Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass : Poems - Lana Del Rey
Complete Poems Of Banjo Paterson - A. B. Paterson

RRP $39.99

$35.35

12%
OFF
Iliad and Odyssey : Leather-bound Classics - Homer

RRP $49.99

$43.40

13%
OFF
Eclipse - Kirli Saunders

Paperback

$24.99

The Way Forward : The Inward Trilogy - yung pueblo

RRP $34.99

$31.75

The Essential Rumi : New Expanded Edition - Coleman Barks
Tao Te Ching : Penguin Classics - Lao Tzu
The Epic of Gilgamesh : Penguin Classics - Andrew George

RRP $22.99

$17.75

23%
OFF
The Odyssey : Bevelled Edge Edition - Homer

RRP $31.95

$23.25

27%
OFF