A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir

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Description

A coming-of-age memoir by a Colombian-Cuban woman about shaping lessons from home into a new, queer life In her lyrical coming-of-age memoir, Daisy Hernandez, the daughter of a Colombian mother and Cuban father, chronicles what the colorful women in her community taught her about race, sex, money, and love. On the outskirts of New York City, Daisy starts out in English-as-a-second-language classes and ends up writing for the "New York Times." In between, she struggles to come out as a bisexual and rebels against her family's expectations that she become white--like the Italians. A touching and heartfelt exploration of family and identity, "A Cup of Water Under My Bed "is about sexuality, immigration, race, and class, but it is ultimately a daughter's story of shaping lessons from home into a new, queer life.

Reviews

Warm and thoughtful, Hernndez writes with cleareyed compassion about living, and redefining success, at the intersection of social, ethnic and racial difference. Personal storytelling at its most authentic and heartfelt.
Kirkus Reviews

Gorgeously written from start to finish.
Boston Globe

Journalist, feminist, and first-time memoirist Hernndez presents a coming-of-age story that dives into the complexities of language, sexuality, and class. An accessible, honest look at the often heart-wrenching effects of intergenerational tension on family ties.
Booklist

This book is a compelling glimpse into the life of a young Latina struggling to hold onto her background and make her way in a world she often finds difficult to embrace. Hernandez's use of language is often poetic, especially when intermingling Spanish and English, with the cultural tones of each.
Windy City Times

By the end of this beautiful book, Daisy Hernndez, 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

With wit and respectful grace, Hernndez shares stories of love for family, of strong (despite herself) roots, and of assimilation and claiming who you are without losing who you were.
Dallas Voice

During a time in history when so much is said about women of color, working-class folks, immigrants, Latinas, poor people, and los depreciados but seldom from them, Hernndez writes with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love. I bow deeply in admiration and gratitude.
Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

A striking and illuminating memoir of stark beauty that challenges our notions of identity and feminine power; absolutely riveting and unforgettable.
Patricia Engel, author of Its Not Love, Its Just Paris

Hernndez writes with grace and clarity about the singular joys and unique pains of growing up in two worlds. A marriage of power and poetry.
Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Hernndez is a stone-cold truth teller, and her talent is eclipsed only by her fearlessness. If this debut is a sign of whats to come, plan to have your heart and head broken wide open. Again and again.
JohnMurillo, author of Up Jump the Boogie

Author Bio

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).