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Catalina

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom “[A] sparkling fiction debut.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel.”—People (Ten Best Books of the Year) “Diabolically charming and magnetic.”—Ira Glass A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, them When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes…

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NPR Books We Love
"Catalina Ituralde is that elusive, cool, shrewdly intelligent, cultured friend who has somehow managed to be unapologetically herself. She is main-character energy. Her senior year at Harvard, Catalina wants to date fellow student Nathaniel Wheeler, work on the literary magazine and write a killer thesis. What happens after graduation is uncertain. As a DREAMer raised in Queens, she’s navigating her undocumented status, her relationship with her grandparents and her place in a world that isn’t built for her. Catalina is a melding of unflinching personal insights and insecurities with an analytical exploration into the politics of feminism, colonialism, race, class and gender. As author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio puts it – out of all the abandoned girls, Catalina could be the valedictorian."
NPR Books We Love — 2024 · apps.npr.org