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February 23, 2026 in Library Corner
By Robin Jacobson
Edward Hirsch is a celebrated American poet and the author of many notable books, both poetry and prose. He is also very funny, as shown by his wisecracking and witty memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy. The book opens with this beguiling prologue:
“My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water on the first day of the New Year. They didn’t expect an entire book.”
From there, the memoir unfurls in a series of biographical snippets and comic anecdotes about Hirsch’s quirky Jewish family and his childhood in Chicago and its suburbs. Aside from the family story, there is much Chicago lore to savor.
Readers first follow the ill-fated romance of Hirsch’s parents, Irma Ginsburg and Harold Rubenstein (called “Ruby”). They were childhood sweethearts, married, had two children, and then separated when Edward was two. Ruby’s gambling was one source of stress; here’s a vignette from the night of Edward’s birth:
“THE GAMBLER The guys were playing cards on the night my mother’s water broke. She needed to get to the hospital immediately. It was snowing outside. ‘I’ll just call you a cab and finish the game,’ my father said, ‘I’ve got a good hand.’”
Several years after Irma and Ruby divorced, Irma married Kurt Hirsch, a good man who raised Edward and his sister, along with another daughter he had with Irma.
When Edward was nine, the family left Chicago for the nearby suburb of Skokie. Irma registered Ruby’s kids for school under the surname Hirsch. Seeing the stepfather’s name on his kids’ report cards, Ruby was stunned and angry. He sued Irma, but had to drop the case when the kids, not wanting to side with either parent, wouldn’t tell the judge which surname they preferred. Calling his kids traitors, Ruby soon left Chicago for California, seeing them only rarely.
Irma was bitter too. When Edward looked through his mom’s photos, he discovered:
“WEDDING ALBUM My mother had punched Ruby’s face out of all the photographs. Here he is faceless with his arm around my grandmother’s shoulder. Here he is faceless dancing with my aunt.”
Irma’s mother, Anna, adored her grandchildren. But that didn’t mean she lavished compliments on Edward:
“BRAIN SALE ‘If we sold everyone’s brains,’ my grandmother said to me, ‘I’d charge the most for yours.’ ‘Why, because I’m the smartest one in the family?’ ‘No, because yours have never been used.’”
When Edward had troubles in school, he asked his grandmother how she had liked going to school as a child. She found his question peculiar: “You didn’t like it or not like it,” she said. “You went until you didn’t go anymore.”
He, in turn, found her concern about cleanliness obsessive:
“NEXT TO GODLINESS She dusted the inside of lampshades. She leaned so far out of her apartment window to wipe it we worried she would fall into the street . . . She also dusted the cans on the kitchen shelves. She lined them up by height, like small soldiers.”
Despite its comedic elements, Edward Hirsch’s childhood was clearly tumultuous. His parents’ bitter divorce, his mother’s tempestuous nature, and ongoing money troubles took an emotional toll.
Once while eating at a Chinese restaurant with his grandmother, Edward pulled from a fortune cookie what seemed at the time a “preposterous” prediction: “Someday you will look back fondly on the past.” But the fortune cookie got it right. A Childhood in Pieces, both funny and poignant, is above all a nostalgic and loving family remembrance.
