I read, and was blown away by, Villavicenia's first work, the nonfiction The Undocumented Americans, a few years ago. So when I saw that she was writing a novel, I was so excited! I requested it on NetGalley as soon as I could, and was very appreciative when I received an eArc. 

 

Catalina is a campus novel, narrated by the titular character, as she traverses her last year at Harvard. Catalina is undocumented, and is struggling with what that means as the DREAMer and DACA legislation is always on the docket for passing/changing/repealing, and regardless, when she graduates, she cannot get a paying job with her status anyways. Her high-achieving academic self is running out of ways to be successful with that as her primary means of "getting ahead," the privileged boy she's talking to doesn't know about her status, and she's about to find out that her grandfather (also undocumented) was caught up in an ICE raid at work. So, what options does she have? 

 

This is an entirely internal novel, like reading someone's diary entries, almost. As such, it is very personable, in tone. Comfortable and relatable in a very intelligent way (there are *many* literary references throughout - which I'm sure I didn't catch all of - all told with a high key interweaving of Latin American sociopolitical and cultural history). There were also lots of flights of thought and imagination, in exactly the way that one's mind flies between concepts and memories and speculations. So it was super well written for the narrative style choice, and both connected the narrative (there were lots of repeating motifs and references) and sort of pulled me out of it, in a disconcertingly obvious way. Just, a super unique style. I was impressed, and also, due to that style and the slower-pacing it led to, was glad to have the audiobook to help move me through. It worked for this shorter length, but might have been too much if the novel was any longer. 

 

One other thing that struck me is that Catalina's internal monologue told of her experiences and emotions and interactions with a sort of remove, a depersonalization. This came across in the ways she sometimes viewed her connections with others at a distance - like not being able to truly have feelings for them or full relationships with them - as well as in her need to change/mold herself based on objective choices on how to be, in order to project the "correct" image (the safest/rightest image), regardless of personal want/preference. In fact, I am not sure, after finishing, and spending that much time in her head, what it was she really did want or how she actually wanted to be. That's how deep that disconnect went. It's a fascinating sort of character development, of becoming/coming of age, because who knows who she actually is if even she isn't sure? 

 

This felt a little bit, to me, like The Bell Jar, for a new age - in all the right and complementary ways that that statement could be taken. It's sort of a reframing of sad girl academia to a new and more inclusively representative American population: tragic and open ended and heartbreaking and a bit satirical. 

 

“That seems like a cynical calculation but I understood the role cynical calculations play in survival.” 

 

“Even in the absence of music, pan-Latin pride had turned my body into a jukebox of tropical glossolalia.” 

 

“I was never beautiful, exactly, but my body listened to me when I aimed it at men. I know that’s how men write women, but how men write women is how I learned to speak English.” 

 

“…a curse at the root of all my pleasures, and a factor in some of my great melancholies.” 

 

“I felt in my heart that people who were politically neutral were cowards.” 

 

“Emasculation at the hands of the state is a very cunning thing for the state to do because men will never see if coming from the state. They’ll blame the subjects in their own kingdoms, the women and children to whom they are lords. The only people to whom they are lords.” 

 

“He never admitted that he was sad, because if he was sad about this, then he had to be sad about everything, and how much sadness could one man take?” 

 

“The problem with being an object of beauty, a beautiful object, means you exist only when you’re looked at, and thus to remain alive you must be constantly looked at, the way sharks need to be in motion to breathe. It feels like soul death when their eyes are off you.” 

 

“My grandparents were the ones with dreams. Their dreams had not come true. Maybe my parents were smart not to have dreams. Maybe they did have dreams, but I just wouldn’t find those dreams respectable. Maybe I’d cringe.” 

 

“They were nothing special. That was the most humiliating part of all of this. The rest of the world is plundered and bombed so rich white people can eat Caesar salad with each other and be inane.” 

 

“Unless it is read, a book is just an object. There are no holy texts without believers to read them.” 

 

“But I was tired of being so easily able to provide context for everything he did that hurt me.” 

 

“I can hold on to grudges forever. I rooted against the khipu codebreakers. I hoped that they would never unlock the secrets of the khipu. This was their curse. I hoped that for them, it remained an unfulfilled longing. There were consequences to empire.” 

 

“A new chapter was starting. There were days to be had.”