Uncovering the Hidden Truths of Identity: A Riveting Journey Through Unbelonging
A British native who spent her early years in Nigeria, Jagoe came to the United States as a research fellow at Cambridge and stayed after marrying her American husband. They settled in Madison, Wisconsin, but in her work as a translator, she also spends many months in Spain. The book’s essays explore how she is and is not at home in those places.
The question of ‘what is home’ has never been an easy one to answer, Jagoe states in the book’s opening essay, “The Home Goal: Variations On A Theme.” She describes attending a meditation workshop, where she’s asked what home means to her. “How to explain the grief and the longing caused in me as an immigrant several times over?” she writes. “How to explain that the very reason I was there hinged on my inability to feel at home in the world?” Although she flees the workshop to avoid answering the question, Jagoe explores the answer brilliantly in the collection’s 17 essays. A lesser writer might easily slip into clichés around the topic, but Jagoe writes with originality and lyricism of her childhood in England, sojourns in Spain, and time spent in the United States.
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