Hunger Artist: A Suburban Childhood

by Joanne Jacobson

A book of memories of growing up Jewish in the Midwest suburbs that proves itself literature of the highest order.

"Joanne Jacobson's memoir of postwar suburbia, stories rendered in incandescent images and illuminating insights, unflinchingly depicts life's insatiable hungers. The book's multiple facets leave the reader delighted, disturbed, but ultimately, completely fulfilled."

-Faye Moskowitz, author of A Leak in the Heart and Peace in the House: Tales from a Yiddish Kitchen

132 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2007

About the author

Joanne Jacobson trained as an academic but has written personal narrative for the last twenty years—and a native Midwesterner who has lived in New York City for three decades. A widely published essayist, she is the author of three books: a scholarly monograph on the politics of letter-writing; a memoir on growing up Jewish in suburbia; and, most recently, a collection of essays that puts into dialogue with one another two chronic illnesses, her mother’s lung disease and her own rare blood disorder. At the heart of everything she writes is her concern with the precious resources that language brings to human resiliency.

She has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Angers (France), Middlebury College, and at Yeshiva University.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joanne Jacobson grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Evanston, Illinois just outside of Chicago. Her poignant memories of Davy Crockett caps and Mouseketeer ears, of Paint-by-Number sets and Venus Paradise pencil sets, of Sinclair gas stations with their bright green brontosaurus logos with attendants who pumped your gas and cleaned your car windows are all luscious details of the shared sheltered existence of growing up in the segregated, white, post-war world that existed on tv screens and in suburbs in the 1950s. Her attention to those memory igniting details truly takes you back there, like an episode of The Twilight Zone might have. Her more personal memories are, of course, deeper and darker than those details as she reveals a family imploding, her own needs and impulses often dark and sometimes dangerous, teachers and trusted adults who bordered on abusive—like the proverbial peeling onion taking the reader on a sadder, twisted journey while wondering how she made it through with her psyche intact.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my aunt's first book, a memoir about growing up Jewish in Evanston, Illinois in the 50s and early 60s. She's wrtten it as a series of vignettes that create a mosaic of her childhood. I found it fascinating personally because this is a part of my family history I didn't know as well as because it was a part of my aunt's life that I'd never known. I also found her descriptions of Jewish and 50s life captivating. A great book, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Jewish life and/or life in 1950s suburban America.