Unbelonging: A Life in Search of Home

First published in The Midwest Book Review

Synopsis: "Where are you from?"

For poet, translator, essayist and critic Catherine Jagoe, a set of complicated assumptions often lies behind this seemingly banal question.

While partly an immigrant narrative, Jagoe's memoir in essays, "Unbelonging: A Life in Search of Home" is not so much (or not only) about moving to the US and putting down roots but rather more about feeling perpetually in-between and never quite "home."

Throughout her memoir, Jagoe wrestles with what identity and fidelity mean for a woman with three nationalities, a job as a translator who frequently lives in a fourth country, a history of depression, and chronically divided allegiances.

Together, these essays comprising "Unbelonging: A Life in Search of Home" paint a deeply personal yet incredibly relatable portrait of what it means to be an American (and an immigrant) in the twenty-first century.

Critique: Deftly crafted, intensely personal, and with a universal resonance, "Unbelonging: A Life in Search of Home" is an eloquent and inherently fascinating life story -- one that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after this slender book has been finished and set back upon the shelf. The paperback edition of "Unbelonging: A Life in Search of Home" is especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal, community, and college/university library Contemporary Biography/Memoir collections and supplemental Women's Studies curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Catherine Jagoe (https://www.catherinejagoe.com) is a poet, essayist, and translator based in Madison, Wisconsin. Her collection Bloodroot won the Settlement House American Poetry Prize and the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Edna Meudt Award, and Praying to the God of Small Things was named an Outstanding Work of Poetry by the Wisconsin Library Association. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, among several other honors, she has published nine full-length books and four chapbooks across genres. Her personal essays have aired numerous times on Wisconsin Public Radio's Wisconsin Life series.