A Cup of Water Under My Bed

A Memoir

Daisy Hernández

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Paperback

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English

Beacon Press
15 October 2024

Memoirs; Gay & Lesbian studies; Hispanic & Latino studies

""I wish this book had been available for me when I was making my foolish way in my perilous 20s, but how glorious that it's available now."" -Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

A Colombian-Cuban daughter's story of becoming her own person, finding herself in community, and building a new queer life

The PEN Literary Award-winning author ""writes with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love"" about her Colombian-Cuban heritage and queer identity in this poignant coming-of-age memoir (Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street).

In this lyrical, coming-of-age memoir, Daisy Hernandez chronicles what the women in her Cuban-Colombian family taught her about love, money, and race. Her mother warns her about envidia and men who seduce you with pastries, while one tia bemoans that her niece is turning out to be ""una india"" instead of an American. Another auntie instructs that when two people are close, they are bound to become like una y mugre, fingernails and dirt, and that no, Daisy's father is not godless. He's simply praying to a candy dish that can be traced back to Africa.

These lessons-rooted in women's experiences of migration, colonization, y carino-define in evocative detail what it means to grow up female in an immigrant home. In one story, Daisy sets out to defy the dictates of race and class that preoccupy her mother and tias, but dating women and transmen, and coming to identify as bisexual, leads her to unexpected questions. In another piece, NAFTA shuts local factories in her hometown on the outskirts of New York City, and she begins translating unemployment forms for her parents, moving between English and Spanish, as well as private and collective fears. In prose that is both memoir and commentary, Daisy reflects on reporting for the New York Times as the paper is rocked by the biggest plagiarism scandal in its history and plunged into debates about the role of race in the newsroom.

A heartfelt exploration of family, identity, and language, A Cup of Water Under My Bed is ultimately a daughter's story of finding herself and her community, and of creating a new, queer life.

By: Daisy Hernández
Imprint: Beacon Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780807017333
ISBN 10: 0807017337
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 15 October 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

On Love: A Note for the Second Edition Condemned ONE Before Love, Memory Stories She Tells Us The Candy Dish A Cup of Water Under My Bed TWO Even If I Kiss a Woman Queer Narratives Qué India THREE Only Ricos Have Credit My Father’s Hands Blackout Después Agradecimientos

Daisy Hernandez is the coeditorof Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism and the former editor of ColorLines magazine. She speaks at colleges and conferences about feminism, race, and media representations, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Ms. magazine, CultureStrike, In These Times, Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, and Hunger Mountain, and on NPR's All Things Considered. In 2022, she won the PEN Literary Award for The Kissing Bug (Tin House).

Reviews for A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir

“Gorgeously written from start to finish.” —Boston Globe “By the end of this beautiful book, Daisy Hernández, a queer American Latina, has threaded Spanish and English together to create an inimitable new language in a brave and brilliant negotiation of a multilingual world.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Hernández writes with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street