Andrew Dryer
Catherine Jagoe with her book, 'Unbecoming.'
Normally I would start with something like, “Madison’s Catherine Jagoe will publish her new book of essays, Unbelonging, with UW Press.” But Unbelonging’s theme, its mission, you might say, is to question Jagoe’s identity — as a Madisonian, a United States citizen, a Brit, and a sometimes Spaniard. The volume’s subtitle, “A Life in Search of Home,” is a poignant reminder that “home” can be a complicated concept.
About five years ago, when Jagoe started thinking about pulling together a collection from her published essays, she saw the thematic links. Then she started to write more pieces “specifically for this, looking at the gaps.”
Jagoe was born in Britain and spent part of her early childhood in Nigeria, where her father worked for the British foreign service; as an adult she’s also lived in France and Spain and regularly spends part of her time in Spain (she has a Ph.D. in Spanish literature and is a translator). Her last book, 2024’s Praying to the God of Small Things, was poetry that concentrated on climate change and the Midwestern landscape. Unbelonging, says Jagoe, centers on “the question of where do we belong, the ways we do and don’t belong — and language, of course.”
The 17 essays take on the topic from a variety of angles, not just chronological autobiography. In the playful “On the Van Galder from Wisconsin to O’Hare,” Jagoe ponders contemporary travel — from her plush seat on the bus Madisonians know all too well as an economical but tedious conveyance to and from O’Hare. “Homecoming Stew” intersperses the text of a beloved family recipe with reflections on Jagoe’s tense relationship with her mother.
“Splitting” is an associative, disjointed take on being a migraine sufferer: “That seemed to fit the topic too, the idea of being split and having your life fragmented into the times when you’re well and the times when you’re not well,” says Jagoe.
As a poet, she was attracted by the 1990s trend toward lyric essays, using forms that “allow you to experiment outside of the narrative voice to tell a story, to tell it slant, to tell it by imaginative leaps.”
Unbelonging closes with the moving essay “Finding the Springs,” an account of how Jagoe emerged from a major depressive episode after following her Madison therapist’s advice to spend time in nature, locating nine springs in the area: “See if you can find them.” Jagoe describes the essay as “sort of a redemption story about really finding community, apprenticing to the natural world and finding a way of belonging through that.”
The book’s publication date is Aug. 18, which she reveals is “not coincidentally” the 40th anniversary of the day she first arrived in Madison from England. The book launch, part of the Wisconsin Book Festival, takes place Sept. 30 at the Central Library, where Jagoe will be in conversation with Madison poet Heather Swan.
