Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, sexual content, death, mental illness, disordered eating, self-harm, and cursing. 

“Four years at Harvard had been presented to me like a trip to Disney World to a terminally ill child and the end was coming. I could not be legally employed after graduation.”

As an undocumented student, Catalina will graduate from one of the best schools in the world without the possibility of legal employment. Comparing her time at Harvard to a terminally ill child’s trip to Disney World to is a dissonant simile, designed to emphasize Catalina’s sense of dread. This sense of a looming “end” also foreshadows the mental illness that Catalina will suffer later in the novel, manifested as depression, disordered eating, and self-harm.

“I wanted to be the photograph. I wanted to be Art. I knew it was only a matter of time before a boy in a band wrote a song about me, but that would require patience and I suspected the song would not be very good. Once again, I would have to rely on my own scruples to make things happen. I would have to become a writer myself.”

Catalina wants to become a writer so that she can take control of her own story. She sees herself as the subject: a muse and an art object in and of herself. She has no doubt that others will be inspired by her and turn her into art. However, she worries that they won’t do her justice, so she endeavors to take matters into her own hands.

“My grandparents did a quiet math around me, balancing the reality of the present and all its dinginess with the possibility of a happier future. I tried very hard to make the sacrifice seem worth it. What was The Sacrifice? It was everything they did or went without to help me make it in America. My grandfather’s job was demeaning and he did it for me. He did it for money but it was money for me. And not enough money, my grandmother would be the first to remind you. Being undocumented is not for the weak of heart. My grandparents lived hunched over, arms linked; climbing up in this world meant standing on their backs, and they let me know.”

Throughout the novel, Catalina challenges stereotyped perceptions of immigrants, breaking stigmas that suggest that undocumented people are taking advantage of the system and intentionally not following rules for their own benefit. Here, she paints the literal physical sacrifices that her grandparents have made, as her grandfather has destroyed his body through manual labor so that Catalina could get an education.