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First Year Common Reading: Home

A central hub for information about the First-Year common reading. Connect to resources, themes, and events.

Daisy Hernandez on A Cup of Water Under My Bed

2009 Keynote Address

A Cup of Water Under My Bed: Sample Themes

Intersectionality of race, class, gender and sexuality 

Language and Identity

Religion and Identity- Catholicism and Afro-Caribbean religions - Santeria

Family Ritual

Individuation in Human Development

Class and consumerism 

Colonization 

Perception of Self 

The Author - Daisy Hernandez

Daisy Hernández is the author of he author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed. She is also the author of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of an Insect, a Family and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease and coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism. The former editor of ColorLines magazine, she has reported for National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Slate, and she has written for NPR's All Things Considered and CodeSwitch.

A contributing editor for the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, Daisy is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Miami University in Ohio.

-Adapted from her website