Catalina
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of the acclaimed nonfiction book The Undocumented Americans, turns to fiction with the story of Catalina Ituralde. Orphaned in Ecuador and raised by undocumented grandparents in Queens, Catalina has clawed her way to Harvard, where she juggles classes, parties, secret societies, and a crush on a budding anthropologist. But graduation looms like a cliff, because the country she has lived in since age five still has no legal place for her. Sharp, funny, and unsparing, the novel captures the strange position of a brilliant young woman who has done everything right and still cannot count on a future.
Also by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
What you might want to know about Catalina
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An undocumented Ecuadorian student navigates her senior year at Harvard while her grandparents' status, and her own future, hang in the balance.
It is fiction, but Karla Cornejo Villavicencio draws on her own experience as one of Harvard's first undocumented graduates, who like Catalina grew up in Queens.
Catalina was written by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, published in 2024 by One World.
Catalina is 224 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Catalina takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
Catalina is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
