Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s semi-autobiographical debut novel tells the story of Catalina Ituralde, a cunning yet naive undocumented immigrant on the verge of graduating from Harvard. Due to her immigration status, Catalina, a blue-collar New Yorker by way of Ecuador, has always known that good grades could only get her so far. For years, she has worked to infiltrate the university’s high society. Finally, in her senior year, she lands a boyfriend, a sanctimonious anthropology student, and possibly a job with hisdad, a famous movie producer. But when Catalina’s grandfather finds himself at risk of being deported, she discovers that she is nothing but a run-of-the-mill sob story to her university’s bleeding heart ruling class. Catalina is a scathing indictment of America’s immigration policies wrapped in a sardonic campus novel.
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