The PEN Literary Award-winning author \u201cwrites with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love\u201d about her Colombian-Cuban heritage and queer identity in this poignant coming-of-age memoir (Sandra Cisneros, author of\u00a0<\/b>The House on Mango Street<\/i><\/b>).<\/b><\/p>\n
In this lyrical, coming-of-age memoir, Daisy Hern\u00e1ndez chronicles what the women in her Cuban-Colombian family taught her about love, money, and race. Her mother warns her about\u00a0envidia\u00a0<\/i>and men who seduce you with pastries, while one t\u00eda bemoans that her niece is turning out to be \u201cuna india<\/i>\u201d instead of an American. Another auntie instructs that when two people are close, they are bound to become like\u00a0u\u00f1a y mugre<\/i>, fingernails and dirt, and that no, Daisy\u2019s father is not godless. He\u2019s simply praying to a candy dish that can be traced back to Africa.<\/p>\n
These lessons\u2014rooted in women\u2019s experiences of migration, colonization,\u00a0y cari\u00f1o<\/i>\u2014define 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 t\u00edas, 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\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/i>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.<\/p>\n
A heartfelt exploration of family, identity, and language,\u00a0A Cup of Water Under My Bed<\/i>\u00a0is ultimately a daughter\u2019s story of finding herself and her community, and of creating a new, queer life.<\/p>\n