-
A Cup of Water Under My Bed
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Daisy Hernández
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.84
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
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 Hernández 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 tía 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 uña 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 cariño—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 tías, 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
“Warm and thoughtful, Hernández 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
“Journalist, feminist, and first-time memoirist Hernández 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
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
My Broken Language
- A Memoir
- By: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Narrated by: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her mother and aunts and cousins, but haunted by the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio — even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars.
-
-
A voice that needed to be heard
- By Juan C. Velandia on 04-08-21
-
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
- A Novel
- By: Zoraida Córdova
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.
-
-
Magical Realism Weirdness
- By @abagoflit on 09-08-21
By: Zoraida Córdova
-
Once I Was You
- A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
- By: Maria Hinojosa
- Narrated by: Maria Hinojosa
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly 30 years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media - from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the war on terror and the first detention camps in the US. Best-selling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community”. In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago.
-
-
Fabulous!!
- By andrea L. on 01-13-21
By: Maria Hinojosa
-
First Gen
- A Memoir
- By: Alejandra Campoverdi
- Narrated by: Alejandra Campoverdi
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member’s girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She’s ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She’s been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you’re a “First and Only.” It also comes at a price. With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles.
-
-
Must READ for any Latina
- By M. Delatorre on 09-14-23
-
The Kissing Bug
- A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease
- By: Daisy Hernández
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her 30s, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas - or the kissing bug disease - is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus.
-
-
excellent biographic book
- By Anonymous User on 06-18-21
By: Daisy Hernández
-
The Waves Take You Home
- A Novel
- By: María Alejandra Barrios Vélez
- Narrated by: Krysta Gonzales
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta Sanoguera had always done what she was told. She left the man she loved in Colombia in pursuit of a better life for herself and because her mother and grandmother didn’t approve of him. Chasing dreams of education and art in New York City, and with a new love, twenty-eight-year-old Violeta establishes a new life for herself, on her terms. But when her grandmother suddenly dies, everything changes.
-
-
Gripping hear felt listen!
- By Pamela Ann Plumer on 05-26-24
-
My Broken Language
- A Memoir
- By: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Narrated by: Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her mother and aunts and cousins, but haunted by the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio — even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars.
-
-
A voice that needed to be heard
- By Juan C. Velandia on 04-08-21
-
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
- A Novel
- By: Zoraida Córdova
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.
-
-
Magical Realism Weirdness
- By @abagoflit on 09-08-21
By: Zoraida Córdova
-
Once I Was You
- A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
- By: Maria Hinojosa
- Narrated by: Maria Hinojosa
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly 30 years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media - from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the war on terror and the first detention camps in the US. Best-selling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community”. In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago.
-
-
Fabulous!!
- By andrea L. on 01-13-21
By: Maria Hinojosa
-
First Gen
- A Memoir
- By: Alejandra Campoverdi
- Narrated by: Alejandra Campoverdi
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member’s girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She’s ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She’s been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you’re a “First and Only.” It also comes at a price. With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles.
-
-
Must READ for any Latina
- By M. Delatorre on 09-14-23
-
The Kissing Bug
- A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease
- By: Daisy Hernández
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her 30s, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas - or the kissing bug disease - is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus.
-
-
excellent biographic book
- By Anonymous User on 06-18-21
By: Daisy Hernández
-
The Waves Take You Home
- A Novel
- By: María Alejandra Barrios Vélez
- Narrated by: Krysta Gonzales
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta Sanoguera had always done what she was told. She left the man she loved in Colombia in pursuit of a better life for herself and because her mother and grandmother didn’t approve of him. Chasing dreams of education and art in New York City, and with a new love, twenty-eight-year-old Violeta establishes a new life for herself, on her terms. But when her grandmother suddenly dies, everything changes.
-
-
Gripping hear felt listen!
- By Pamela Ann Plumer on 05-26-24
-
Maria’s Scarf
- A Memoir of a Mother’s Love, a Son’s Perseverance, and Dreaming Big
- By: Zoro
- Narrated by: Zoro
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the fatherless biracial child of a Mexican immigrant, Danny Donnelly was never expected to amount to much. Before the age of nine, his single mother had moved her seven children more than thirty times—from the impoverished streets of South Central Los Angeles to rural Oregon and everywhere in between.
-
-
Very inspiring story
- By Michael Kanter on 10-14-24
By: Zoro
-
The Way from Me to Us
- By: Mike Coleman
- Narrated by: FR Springer
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
THE WAY FROM ME TO US is the story of two pioneers. It’s the true account of a love that began nearly 50 years ago in a Nashville gay bar called The Other Side. It was 1977, when coming out could mean you lost everything. Your job. Your friends. Your family. Mike and Ted were all too aware of the risks at the bar that night. It was literally a step to the other side for Mike, who was nowhere near as accepting of his true self as Ted was of his. “I like being gay,” Ted told him. “I’d like to find somebody who likes being gay with me.”
-
-
Incredible Vocal Performance
- By Mike Coleman on 10-14-24
By: Mike Coleman
-
Creep
- Accusations and Confessions
- By: Myriam Gurba
- Narrated by: Myriam Gurba
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes.
-
-
Well crafted collection of essays
- By Beezus on 07-21-24
By: Myriam Gurba
-
Rain God
- By: Arturo Islas
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in a fictional small town on the Texas-Mexico border, it tells the funny, sad, and quietly outrageous saga of the children and grandchildren of Mama Chona the indomitable matriarch of the Angel clan who fled the bullets and blood of the 1911 revolution for a gringo land of promise. In bold creative strokes, Islas paints on unforgettable family portrait of souls haunted by ghosts and madness - sinners torn by loves, lusts, and dangerous desires.
By: Arturo Islas
-
The Boy Who Reached for the Stars
- A Memoir
- By: Elio Morillo
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elio Morillo’s life is abruptly spun out of orbit when economic collapse and personal circumstances compel his mother to flee Ecuador for the United States in search of a better future for her son. His itinerant childhood sets into motion a migration that will ultimately carry Elio to the farthest expanse of human endeavor: space.
-
-
Such an inspiring story.
- By Anonymous User on 11-01-23
By: Elio Morillo
-
Motherland
- A Memoir
- By: Paula Ramón, Julia Sanches - translator, Jennifer Shyue - translator
- Narrated by: Ana Osorio
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the span of a generation, oil-rich Venezuela spiraled into a dire state of economic collapse. Reporter Paula Ramón experienced the crisis firsthand as her middle-class family saw their quality of life deteriorate. Public services no longer functioned. Money lost its value. Her mother couldn’t afford to buy food, which was increasingly scarce. The once-prosperous country fell into ruin. Like many others, Ramón’s family struggled to survive each day in their beloved city, Maracaibo—until, one by one, they each made the unbearable choice to leave the home they love.
-
-
Devastating and informative.
- By Gabriela on 07-06-24
By: Paula Ramón, and others
-
Too Soon for Adiós
- By: Annette Chavez Macias
- Narrated by: Luzma Ortiz
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one expects to meet their father at their mother’s funeral. But for Gabby Medina, that’s exactly what happens. Her dad abandoned her when she was a baby, and now he’s back. And he wants to give her a house. Gabby doesn’t want the house—or him. But she could use the money. So Gabby agrees to take it under two conditions: First, she can sell the house whenever she wants. Second, accepting it doesn’t mean she accepts him.
-
-
relatable
- By Jessica on 04-23-23
-
Somewhere We Are Human
- Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings
- By: Reyna Grande, Sonia Guiñansaca
- Narrated by: Avi Roque, Diana Pou, Marisa Blake, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of 41 groundbreaking essays, poems, and artwork by migrants, refugees and Dreamers—including award-winning writers, artists, and activists—that illuminate what it is like living undocumented today.
-
-
Voices of the new immigrants
- By Angela Arias on 12-18-22
By: Reyna Grande, and others
-
On a Night of a Thousand Stars
- By: Andrea Yaryura Clark
- Narrated by: Paula Christensen
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little. Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the dictatorship of 1976.
-
-
Amazing narration, moving story!
- By Suzanne B on 04-03-22
-
Las Madres
- A Novel
- By: Esmeralda Santiago
- Narrated by: Esmeralda Santiago
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning, best-selling author of When I Was Puerto Rican, a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together.
-
-
Accurate information
- By Julian on 09-23-23
-
Frighten the Horses
- A Memoir
- By: Oliver Radclyffe
- Narrated by: Oliver Radclyffe
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a handsome, successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked off every box—marriage, children (four), a white-picket fence surrounding a stately home in Connecticut, and a golden retriever named Biscuit. But beneath the shiny veneer, Oliver was desperately trying to stay afloat as he struggled to maintain a facade of normalcy.
By: Oliver Radclyffe
-
Relentless
- My Story of the Latino Spirit That Is Transforming America
- By: Luis A. Miranda Jr., Richard Wolffe - contributor, Lin-Manuel Miranda - foreword
- Narrated by: Luis A. Miranda Jr.
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A veteran of New York and national politics, Luis Miranda embodies the relentless spirit of progress of American immigrants. There is no one on the Latino, New York, and national political scene with the breadth of experience, passion, and storytelling charm of Luis Miranda. In Relentless, he shares a fascinating narrative of his life and career—from his early days as a radically minded Puerto Rican activist to his decades of political advice and problem-solving.
-
-
Relentless
- By Anonymous User on 10-06-24
By: Luis A. Miranda Jr., and others