As I started reading, my initial thoughts were how jumbled everything seemed. We jump right into meeting our narrator and main character Catalina, and she is this vivacious and daring young woman navigating life as an undocumented Harvard student. The first part of this book read like a string of info-dumps where topics switched in an instant. But as you slowly get to know Catalina and her background, the story transitions into her present environment in Harvard as she balances her work, her relationships, and her status as an undocumented person in America. And as she gets closer to her graduation day, she slowly unravels.

It was so interesting to see the world through Catalina's lens. In a way, it felt like she found the right way to tell her story, rather than that documentary she was planning. And you also go along with her in her journey as she powers through so much, like how the people around her at Harvard romanticize her Latin American roots, how she deals with her grandfather's deportation issue, how she spirals when she doesn't know what she will do after graduation because she's undocumented, how she deals with her romantic relationships, and more! This book truly encapsulates how a person has layers and they're multi-faceted while still calling attention to what it's like to be undocumented in America.

When I was given the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, I was quite excited. My hope was to experience the depth of the plight of an undocumented immigrant. However, Catalina fell a bit short in that regard. While it did address the undocumented aspect of Catalina’s life as well as that of her grandparents, it did not do so to the magnitude that I had hoped. I wanted to dig and I wanted to dig deep. The beauty of America lies in her diversity, and I was hoping to explore this beauty with dignity and detail and raw emotion to a greater extent. But even though Catalina did not go as deep as I had hoped, I still enjoyed reading this novel.

Catalina is a coming-of-age novel exploring the life of Catalina, an undocumented Harvard student who was sent from Latin America to the United States as a child to be raised by her undocumented grandparents. Her character is quirky. At times you love her. At times you do not. But you keep coming back for more. And her relationships with her grandparents, professors and peers are quirky too. The book explores her life at Harvard and all that it entails. There are some very humorous scenes and stories in this novel, and humor is never a bad thing. I really enjoyed the opportunity to laugh at parts of the story. And there was a bit of a surprising twist at the end to keep it interesting just when you thought you had it all figured out. The book was a bit jumpy at times and a little difficult to follow because of it, but it is not a long read and I am glad that I stuck with it.

Three solid stars, and a huge thank you to NetGalley, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, and Random House Publishing Group for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Catalina in exchange for my honest review.

#Catalina #NetGalley

I knew from Villavicencio's nonfiction, the Undocumented Americans, that her narrative writing skills were top tier so learning about her upcoming novel thrilled me. It did not disappoint!

This was everything- vulnerable, messy, insightful, funny, unsettling, devastating.

I will remember Catalina for a long, long time.

Ratings
Quality of Writing 5/5
Pacing 5/5
Plot Development 4/5
Character Development 5/5
Overall Enjoyability 5/5

Catalina is a coming-of-age novel of a young woman who grows up undocumented and then gets into Harvard. What will come next, and what she experiences along the way, create a tension and interest that you will really enjoy.

Loved Villavicenio’s “The Undocumented Americans” so I was very eager to read this one. However, “Catalina” fell short for me, as there was not much of a plot, and things just jumped from one thought or event to another.

This is the story of an undocumented Dreamer Catalina who was raised by her undocumented grandparents. She gets accepted to Harvard, a great accomplishment for her. . I did feel empathy for the family, they , always had to worry about deportation .
Catalina doesn’t have an easy time fitting in Harvard, struggles to get through.
I did not enjoy the writing style, was not able to finish it. Overall no more than three stars.
I received an advanced copy, opinions are my own.

I read The Undocumented Americans a few years back, and really appreciated the heartbreaking look at a world so different from my own. Catalina was no exception. Catalina was moved to the US to be raised by her grandparents as a child after her parents died - she's a dreamer, and her grandparents are undocumented. She ends up with a scholarship to Harvard, and has to learn to navigate a world of privilege while figuring out what she wants to do with her life. She finds herself drawn to a boy who also has an interest in her Latin American heritage from an anthropological viewpoint and starts to spin out as her home life in NYC begins to fall apart. I found this book chaotic and stressful, which I think was intentional. As a dreamer, Catalina's life is fraught, stressful, embroiled in politics. Her grandfather gets earmarked for deportation and she spins even further.

I found Catalina herself pretty unlikeable, but I appreciated the story that she told.

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was a good coming of age novel, different from others because it focus on undocumented issues. I enjoyed my time reading it and I found the characters to be so intriguing and original. You couldn't help but feel for Catalina and everything that she was going through and it felt very real at times. There were parts that felt a little out of place, a stream of consciousness that would take me out of the story but I was able to overlook that for the greater storyline. Overall, I think this book will work for a lot of people, especially those looking for stories that give more 'vibes' than a straight story plotline.

DNF - This book had great potential, but I felt the tone was immature, the pacing is non-existent, and Catalina, the main character, is unlikable. There are important themes which are touched on but never fully explored: deportation, immigration, family life, class differences, education, sexuality. It was difficult to know what the point of view really was in this book, with so much snarkiness and whining.

This book was really middle of the road to me. It took me about half the book to really feel sucked in but ultimately I do think the story picked up and held my attention. I didn’t mind reading it but now that I’ve finished, I don’t think the story will stay with me. A solid middle of the road 3 stars.

I LOVED this so much. The main character is messy and sometimes unlikeable, but also incredibly relatable. The writing style is so unique and made this unputtdownable for me.

In "Catalina," we meet Catalina Ituralde, a remarkable young woman navigating the complexities of elite academia and her own identity. From her miraculous survival in Latin America to her undocumented upbringing in Queens, Catalina's journey to Harvard seems fated. But as she confronts her undocumented status and the looming uncertainty of graduation, Catalina's wit and intellect become both her shield and her downfall.

Through a captivating blend of campus novel, hagiography, and pop culture, the author paints a vivid portrait of Catalina's quest for love and liberation amidst the privileged world of Harvard. As graduation approaches, Catalina grapples with questions of salvation and selfhood, propelling her towards a reckoning with her past and her future.

"Catalina" is a story of resilience and defiance, offering a fresh and incisive take on the coming-of-age narrative. With its unforgettable protagonist and gripping narrative, this novel is a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to carve out their own destiny in a world filled with uncertainty.

I didn't think I would relate to a coming-of-age story about a Harvard student, but I really enjoyed this story.

After Catalina's parents die in a car accident, she's sent from Ecuador to live with her grandparents in New York. They raise her as their own, but like her, they are undocumented and have limited opportunities. Still, they understand the doors education can open for her and push her to be a high achiever, and ultimately, to enroll at Harvard. We see her struggles there as well as her growth. In many ways, she's just a typical young person trying to figure out who they want to be, but in her case all of this is complicated by the fact that she's undocumented and reluctant to be seen as a poster child for her entire group. The story does a great job of showing her as a full, complicated young person, by turns confident and vulnerable, and also the imperfect family she and her grandparents make together, full of love but also, like every family, with its own set of problems. My heart broke for her when she had to deal with her grandfather's deportation orders on top of the usual pressures every college student faces, and the little moments where even seemingly well-meaning adults and friends treat her culture and history like an exotic 'other.'

Some of the jumping around in time could have been a bit less jarring (occasionally I'd have to reread a paragraph because I didn't realize it had gone from present day to something else entirely) but overall this was a very fast moving and engaging read.

I tried to read this one but it did not grab me. I finally put it down. I think it is perhaps due to my own tastes rather than the novel having faults. DNF for me.

Catalina is about a girl who survived death in Ecuador and was sent to America to live with her undocumented grandparents in New York. We follow her as she attends Harvard: interning at a magazine, working at Peabody Museum, befriending the son of a famous filmmaker, and… well… spiraling.

It’s delicious in the way only a story of a girl losing herself in upper class society can be. Catalina is raw, she is delicate, she is selfish, and she is scared. One scene of note really highlighted the work as a whole to me: during winter break, Catalina’s friend who studies anthroplogy took an educational trip to Columbia and all she could focus on what that he didn’t invite her. Despite the fact that he was going to further his education, despite the fact that she’s undocumented. Although her fear of deportation is always at the forefront, it’s always juxtaposed by this sort of selfish carelessness.

Much of Cornejo Villavicencio’s storytelling is through stream of consciousness (which I’ve learned doesn’t bother me like it once had), she also undercuts profound moments with silly, direct statements that I found quite enjoyable. For example: “To many of my ancestors, I would have been just another little brown girl, forgotten on another continent, passed around from hand to hand. Imagine being born a goldfish.”

Though I took much longer reading this book than I expected (mostly due to the fact that this is told in four parts/seasons with no chapters beyond that), I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the life of an undocumented college student in an elite environment.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, and One World for an ARC of this book!

This is a coming-of-age story in the literary tradition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and his Ulysses, the education of the singular Stephen Dedalus as a product of the Irish education system, prior to his leaving Ireland.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s Catalina was born in Ecuador and sent north to the United States as a child to live with her undocumented grandparents. Her education takes her as an undocumented citizen to Harvard, during the introduction of the Dream (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act.

Unlike Dedalus’ completed education, Catalina’s education is formative within the university. Her field of formal study is journalism, while at home, her grandfather informally teaches her about the culture of Ecuador. At Harvard her study of the culture of Ecuador expands to the history of the Incas and, an integral part of her education, a physical object, the khipu, a woven string weaving used by early Ecuadorians as a form of linguistic communication, virtually forgotten. A linguistic twist occurs when she takes a semester long class on James Joyce’s incomprehensible novel, finnegans wake. These linguistic devices are woven into the plot of the fast moving and compelling story of Catalina, her family, her friends, her professors, and her lovers.

Thank you to One World, an imprint of Random House, and NetGalley for an Advanced Readers Copy.

As a professional academic and a recovering capital-R Romantic, I have a soft spot in my heart for lost undergraduates with artistic souls. Catalina found that soft spot. Catalina lives with her Cuban grandparents in Queens, all of them undocumented immigrants who fled to the US. She loves to write Tumblr posts, listens to 90s alternative music (I told you I liked her), and makes it into Harvard only to find the extra challenges of not being able to work legally in the States. Villavicencio humanizes the precarious position of folks in the country without the means to enter through the tedious immigration process. This is not a soapbox political statement but the story of people who love, are angry, fail to do basic work but make fantastic food and feel deeply within themselves. Catalina skips class, falls for the wrong boy, travels back and forth between Seventh Day Adventism and Catholicism and precocious undergraduate agnosticism. To be with her is to learn to see the Other in ourselves - and vice versa. The ending is abruptly shocking and heartbreaking and a little bewildering, but the journey is worth it.

Karla Cornejo’s protagonist shares many similarities with her—an undocumented woman from Ecuador, raised in New York, attending Harvard ca. 2011. Catalina has a constant internal monologue that is always entertaining and usually just this side of unhinged, and is fixated on getting her love interest to sleep with her. Cornejo puts the campus novel form—midcentury, male, obsessed with whether the female undergrads will sleep with the brooding protagonist—through the looking-glass as Catalina navigates the absurdly privileged spaces of Harvard, the extracurriculars and secret societies and being surrounded by the rich children of famous people, along with the exams and the academic pressure and the gaping uncertainty about her future because she’s not work-authorized in the US.

I appreciated the portrait of campus life in the late aughts (writing a thesis about 2666 in 2011 is so historically accurate), and especially the oblique way she illustrated Catalina navigating all this, and suffering, against the backdrop of the (spoiler, failed) DREAM Act negotiations in Congress. The romp, the outrageous, ironic, always entertaining patter of internal monologue, is also necessary to make the reader swallow the tragedy that permeates the book. In the end, it’s devastating.

Thanks @netgalley @oneworldbooks for the e-ARC. This is out in July.

Our heroine is Catalina Ituralde, who is a young Ecuadorian undocumented women who finds herself in the US after her parents die and her aunt and uncle give her to her grandparents in the states, also undocumented. She lives in Queens in an apartment with them and then goes off to Harvard. She is quirky, entitled in her own way, and likes to write as she aspires to be a literary star.

Catalina whines a lot and doesn’t seem to be happy as her undocumented status hangs over her head. At school she is blessed with a job, a room to herself, and a boyfriend from of course a well-off family that can help her. She even has friends that care for her but everything in her favor she takes for granted.

The writing is good and perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the entitled Catalina. She has little empathy for others and is mostly self-absorbed, but does help her grandmother when she is called, however she of course resents having to be involved.

I finished the book, but I didn’t enjoy it. If Catalina didn’t like her life then why didn’t she work to change it? She is smart, has loads of access that most people would never ever get, and yet she is still unhappy. Life after school is hard for so many people who do not have the privilege or the connections from Harvard. I got bored with her poor me attitude and there is no big payoff at the end.


I got bored with her poor me attitude and there is no big payoff at the end.

~ I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of Catalina ~

While Catalina promises an enticing tale, the reality is a more confusing stream of consciousness that never really goes in depth on any of the concepts addressed. Cornejo Villavicencio presents themes of immigration, family life, dabbling in class differences, higher education, and even sexuality. However, while the book briefly touches those matters, the ready has no actual idea of what Catalina actually feels or her place in these matters. Very little endears the reader to the title character, and while she goes through struggles that should elicit sympathy, as a reader, it's not really easy to care about her. Her supporting characters, primarily the grandparents are much more interesting characters, but their lives, motivations and realities are also glazed over.

Catalina hints at promise but doesn't deliver and alienates the reader in the process.