A Cup of Water Under My Bed

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface and Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 and Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Borderlands

Daisy Hernández writes about imagined borderlands in A Cup of Water Under My Bed, drawing on the work of Chicana feminist author Gloria Anzaldúa. These borderlands stand at the intersection of multiple identities, including her ethnicity as a Latina, her positions as an American and as a woman, and her queerness. Like Anzaldúa, Hernández is a queer Latina who uses code-switching, or alternating between Spanish and English, to create a sense of liminality in her writing. Spanish is the language of the private, familial sphere for Hernández, while English is a public language of assimilation and of her schooling. For both writers, the borderland is not found in a single locale, but in many.

Like Anzaldúa, Hernández reflects on syncretistic religious practices as identity-shaping. Her family practices both Santería and Catholicism. The former blends Afro-Cuban religious ideas with Catholic. Although she is not a person of deep faith, Hernández finds comfort in her parents’ mystical traditions, including tarot-card reading and leaving offerings for saints and Elegguá, her father’s favored deity. Hernández both rejects and carries her family with her through religion, just as she does by writing.

Sexuality is also a contentious liminal space. Hernández does not adhere to her family’s expectations that she will marry a man, preferably an American and college-educated one. Her mother makes a point of expressing her disappointment after she comes out, while one of Hernández’s aunt’s refuses to speak to her for seven years. As a bisexual woman, she finds herself displaced within her family because she is not straight and within the queer community because she is not a lesbian. She notes her desire for some normality so that she can feel less adrift and can anticipate what comes next in her life.

Hernández also ties her discussion of work to this theme. While she finds success and social advancement through her employment at the New York Times, she never feels at ease in this space dominated by white writers and editors, particularly men, who do not hide their racism. Hernández is subjected to racist comments and financial hardship, even though she crosses class and racial borders: “We both glance across the newsroom, across the cubicles and the tops of people’s heads. I have no way of knowing who in the room is a Mr. Flaco, and this is part of the agreement we make by working here, as people of color” (167). This lack of inclusivity and equitability causes Hernández to depart the Times for Colorlines magazine, where she feels a stronger sense of belonging and connection to the mission.

Gender and Sexuality

Much of Hernández’s memoir focuses on her relationships to the women in her family, namely her mother and her aunts. In contrast, her father appears as a shadowy, distant, and mysterious man. Likewise, her sexuality and her attraction to women strain her relationship with some of the very women who shaped her youth.

Some of the author’s earliest childhood memories are of being tucked up in bed, at her mother’s side, listening to her mother’s stories about Colombian life and her emigration to the United States. She is fascinated by her mother’s former life and her willingness to leave her family for a place that she thinks will be a land of prosperity and success, but which turns out to be a land of laborious factory work and financial strain. She is also close to her aunts, her mother’s sisters, who take her to card readers and give her advice about her love life. These bonds, however, are tested when Hernández reveals her bisexuality. The women in her family never discussed sex with her, and like so many girls who came of age in the 1980s, she learns about it from Judy Blume’s books and the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine. She realizes that sex is not something shameful or that must take place within the confines of marriage. Even before coming out, Hernández knows what response she might receive. She recounts a memory in which the women in her family gossip about another woman who left her husband for a woman. She is perplexed by their response, writing:

Everyone is shocked that a woman was so moved by love that it flung her into the arms of another woman. I, for one, find it terribly romantic […] Two women in love confirms for me that there is love that can push you beyond what everyone else says is possible. I am also not sure why the women in my family are so startled about a woman going off with another mujer. Besides discussing how Colombian men don’t work, all we ever do at home is talk about women (78).

Indeed, her mother goes into a state of shock and depression, stating that her daughter’s attraction to women is unexpected. Hernández’s future, including her relationships, is always linked to her family’s future. It is never hers alone. Her aunts’ reactions vary, but Tía Dora’s response is especially devastating. She cuts off her niece and refuses to speak to her for seven years, even telling Hernández that she is killing her mother. It is only after Hernández begins dating a man that Tía Dora is willing to speak to her again. What she cannot know, would not understand, and would refuse to accept, though, is that Hernández’s boyfriend is a trans man. Ironically, to maintain a connection with this woman who is so important in her life, Hernández must not discuss her love for other women.

Race and Class

The themes of race and class are embedded throughout Hernández’s memoir and highlighted in the final part of the book. From an early age, Hernández recognizes the power and privileges that come with whiteness. She seeks to distance herself from her ethnicity and become more American, something that the women in her life foster as they encourage her not to date Colombian men and to pursue relationships with Americans.

Moreover, Hernández is a first-generation college student who goes on to earn a graduate degree and finds steady employment—and, thus, a reliable income—in contrast to her parents. Her experience as the first in her family to do these things carries with it a heavy responsibility, as well as guilt and shame when she finds herself deep in credit card debt or unhappy in her job at the New York Times. Much of that unhappiness derives from the racist comments and power dynamics in a workplace that is largely dominated by white men, like the editor she calls Mr. Flaco who unashamedly makes racist comments and traffics in stereotypes about Black and Asian Americans. Hernández does not feel like she is welcome or belongs in the Times offices. After the Jayson Blair scandal breaks, the racism is even more apparent. Blair was a young Black reporter who plagiarized many of the stories he published. After Howell Raines, the editor-in-chief, was fired in the aftermath, the former metro editor replaced him. He was “[…] a white man who once told me that community-based organizations, the ones helping poor people of color, were no longer relevant” (168-169).

The fallout from this scandal, and the newspaper’s response, only add to Hernández’s discontent, causing her to quit her job and leave the East Coast for San Francisco, where she works at Colorlines magazine. She carries her family with her in spirit and finds the fulfillment that she lacked in New York: “I […] quickly learned that a small magazine is like a big family. There’s something to do all the time. There’s the toddler who needs to look up for the cover shoot today, the photographer who needs directions, […]” (175). Rather than disappearing into a corner of a meeting room dominated by her white colleagues, Hernández is at the very beating heart of work that is focused on social justice and in which she finds meaning and purpose. Her experience affirms that she does not have to deny where she comes from to move forward in life. The book’s final scene, when Hernández steps off a busy San Francisco bus, represents this forward propulsion in her life; she moves away from her family, but this progress is made possible by their help, which is symbolized by the working-class riders on the bus who help her exit.