"Over and over again, this truth: Writing is how I leave my family and how I take them with me."

I have been sitting with this one for over a week because I just didn't have the words for the emotions I felt during and after reading this one. A Cup of Water Under the Bed  by Daisy Hernandez had masterful prose, descriptive and emotional writing that speaks to your soul and makes you contemplate and reconcile your feelings about language, being tethered to a homeland and how to navigate your own identity. It is an ode to the power of language and how it shapes our interactions with people, places and things. It explored this idea that not every word has a literal translation, that some have context and experience that do not translate and how it is okay to allow such language to just exist and belong to its intended group.

 The one word that comes to mind to describe this book's main theme is "reckoning":

☆ reckoning with being bilingual, one language feels like pebbles on the tongue while the other feels like home

☆ reckoning with the bittersweetness of American Dream and who reaps the benefits

☆ reckoning with the humanity and imperfections of parents

☆ reckoning with learning to love family despite the hurt and forgiveness

☆ reckoning with sexuality and identity within the rigidity of Latinx culture 

☆ reckoning with feminism in a world dominated by machismo and patriarchy 

☆ reckoning with the disparities in income, education, financial literacy and access to social capital as a Latinx person

☆ reckoning with faith and spiritual practices and colonialism

☆ reckoning with what healing looks like

☆ reckoning with assimilation vs. tradition

☆ reckoning with gender based violence and the social inequalities women face

☆ reckoning with the guilt of being a child of immigrants and not living up to expectations 

Alot of the author's experiences resonated with me on a personal level. There were times when I felt like she was describing my own parents' experiences. This book helped me to see how our imperfections can also be beautiful and tell a story rich in history and resilience. 

Bookdragon Rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥