Join Bayonne Public Library and Mamas in Bayonne for our September 2025 Bayonne Book Club! 

All are welcomed and encouraged to attend. The genre / theme of the books chosen will vary. The discussions will be moderated by Bayonne local, Angela van Genderen (@angela_the_ninja).

This month’s meeting will be Thursday, September 25th at 7 pm in the Small Programming Room on the 2nd Floor at the Bayonne Public Library. In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, we will be reading “Catalina” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Attendees can join in-person or virtually via Zoom. To attend virtually, please sign up via the library calendar event listing.

What’s the book about? 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 one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

How can you participate? Bayonne Public Library has eBook and eAudiobook copies available via hoopla as well as physical book copies. If you’d prefer to purchase your own physical copy, we recommend purchasing from The Little Boho Bookshop, our favorite local bookshop, located at 164A Broadway or online at https://thelittlebohobookshop.com/