CATALINA

An undocumented Harvard student approaches a crossroads in 2010.

Catalina Ituralde was born in Ecuador. After her parents died in a car accident, she was raised first by her aunt and uncle in Ecuador and then by her grandparents in Queens, New York. Neither she nor her grandparents have papers to live in the United States. The story follows Catalina as she completes her final year at Harvard, a stressful time for even the most privileged young people but doubly so for a woman who must tend to her aging grandparents while trying to write her senior thesis and determine what she’s going to do after graduation considering she can’t work legally in the country that’s her home. Her life hangs in the balance at a time when the fate of the Dreamers is being used as a political football. This is the author’s first novel, following The Undocumented Americans (2020), a nonfiction book that combined personal narrative with sensitive reporting to capture the stories of undocumented immigrants. Cornejo Villavicencio is herself one of the first undocumented students to have graduated from Harvard. But this novel doesn’t quite live up to the character of Catalina; her name is a fitting title for the book as little else holds it together. Catalina sort of has friends; sort of starts a romantic relationship; sort of cares about her classes, her work-study appointment at a museum on campus, and her thesis; sort of tries to tackle the daunting challenges she and her grandparents face. All of this is understandable: Anyone’s mental health and capacity to manage day-to-day life would buckle under this tremendous existential strain. But while astute, Cornejo Villavicencio’s commentary on the hypocrisy of liberalism and academia aren’t enough to carry a story that relies on coincidence, meanders, and stalls.

The novel doesn’t live up to the overwhelming tension and high stakes of its protagonist’s life.