Catalina

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 

(Penguin, 2024)

Review by Daniel Rey

Meet Catalina Ituralde, final-year English major at Harvard, and sharp-witted narrator. 

Catalina, born in Ecuador, was orphaned as a baby and cared for by her aunt and uncle until she was five. She was then taken to the New York borough of Queens to live with her grandparents, in an apartment permeated by the smell of bleach mixed with spices, and the sound of dinnertime lectures. As the reader learns from the outset, neither she nor her grandparents have the legal right to remain in the US. 

Catalina is the debut novel by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, an Ecuadorian American writer known for her nonfiction book The Undocumented Americans (2020). Written in the first person, her novel describes the hopes and expectations – artistic, professional and romantic – of a gifted, indomitable, uncompromising young woman. However, despite her being about to graduate from the most prestigious university in the world, the constant possibility of deportation hangs over Catalina’s life. 

What strikes you from the first sentence is the assuredness of the voice: ‘In the summer of 2010, the year Instagram launched, there was a cricket invasion in Queens. Something to do with global warming and, if you believed my grandfather, yet another sign that America was lagging behind Cuba in scientific advances.’

Cornejo Villavicencio’s protagonist is just as self-confident as her narration. She coolly asks Nathaniel, a fellow student she has just met, to tie her shoelaces. Nathaniel is the son of a famous British documentary-maker with strong ties to Latin America and shares Catalina’s deep interest in the region. Their friendship-cum-romance becomes one of the main threads of the novel. There is physical and intellectual attraction, but also conflict: he finds her brazen, and she disdains his refined sense of noblesse oblige.

Throughout, Cornejo Villavicencio’s characterisation is superb. Of the grandfather – a needy, domineering man who was her earliest tutor – Catalina writes: ‘My grandfather walked around the Peabody [Museum] like he was interested in making an offer to buy it.’ Then there’s her immigration lawyer, Don Luis, whose ‘natural manner of speaking made him sound like he was playing himself in a biopic.’

Although every recurring character in this novel is vibrant and multidimensional, the narrator dominates her story. It’s noteworthy that the title Catalina chooses for herself is merely her forename – an act of gumption that invites comparison to mononymic artists like Dante, Michelangelo, or Beyoncé. 

Catalina has been described as a Bildungsroman, but it is not so much a coming-of-age story as it is an account of an already mature young woman. Although her interpersonal relationships alter, Catalina’s sense of herself remains consistent. Rather than undergoing a formative psychological change, the novel explores a character who is continuously on the cusp – on the cusp of graduating, on the cusp of love, on the cusp of being deported.

After two books concerned with undocumented migrants, one wonders whether Cornejo Villavicencio’s next book will retain the theme. With such precision, depth of characterisation and command of voice, she could tell any story she likes.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696674/catalina-by-karla-cornejo-villavicencio/