Religion and Family's Impact on LGBT Youth in Daisy Hernandez's Memoir
This paper analyzes a selected chapter of Daisy Hernandez's memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed (2015), focusing on how religion and family influence the experiences of LGBT children. Drawing on Hernandez's first-hand account of growing up bisexual as the daughter of Cuban and Colombian parents in the United States, the paper examines how her Catholic school education and tight-knit Latin American family background complicated her emerging sexual identity. Key episodes — including a pivotal classroom encounter with a substitute teacher and Hernandez's internal struggle to disclose her bisexuality to family — illustrate the broader challenges facing LGBT youth when religious and familial pressures intersect with self-discovery.
- Introduction: Context of memoir and paper's analytical scope
- Review and Analysis: Key episodes exploring bisexuality, religion, and family
- Conclusion: Synthesis of religion, family, and LGBT identity findings
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors its argument in specific, well-chosen textual evidence — direct quotations from Hernandez illustrate her internal conflict more powerfully than paraphrase alone would.
- It contextualizes the memoir within broader social relevance (growing LGBT acceptance in the U.S.), giving the close reading a wider purpose beyond literary analysis.
- The extended metaphor Hernandez uses — "shifting weight from one leg to the other" — is identified and discussed, showing the student's attention to figurative language as a carrier of meaning.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates textual close reading integrated with thematic analysis. Rather than simply summarizing the memoir, the student isolates specific passages — the substitute-teacher scene, the bedroom scene, and the teenager Q&A — and unpacks what each reveals about the intersection of religion, family, and sexual identity. This technique models how to use primary-source quotations as analytical evidence rather than mere illustration.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a three-part structure: an introduction that frames the memoir's context and the paper's purpose; a sustained review-and-analysis section that moves chronologically through key episodes; and a brief conclusion that synthesizes the argument and restates the memoir's broader value. The single extended body section is organized around a series of flashback episodes, mirroring the memoir's own non-linear structure.
Introduction
In her memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed, Daisy Hernandez describes her first-hand experiences growing up in the United States as the daughter of Latin American parents from two different countries. Although Hernandez provides a number of salient examples of how cross-cultural issues affect her life, perhaps the most poignant issue explored in her memoir concerns her coming to grips with being bisexual and what this meant for her and her family given her Catholic education and her parents' views about human sexuality. Given the increasingly widespread acceptance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the United States in recent years — including legislation and changes in social practices — it is important to identify any significant issues that could hamper this process. To this end, this paper provides the context of Hernandez's memoir, followed by an analysis of the impact of religion and family on LGBT children in a selected chapter. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning the effects of religion and family on LGBT children, as exemplified in this chapter, are presented in the conclusion.
Conclusion
In her memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed, Daisy Hernandez delivers an entertaining but thoughtful account of what it means to grow up in America as an intelligent but conflicted young person searching for her identity and her true sexuality. The author's empirical observations and first-hand accounts of how her classmates desperately needed more information about sex beyond the message that AIDS can kill make it clear that young members of the LGBT community are confronted with significant challenges — challenges that are further complicated when powerful religious and familial pressures are involved. In the final analysis, Hernandez provides a valuable service for this community by highlighting these challenges and demonstrating that people of all sexual orientations can discover their own authentic identities.
References
Hernandez, D. (2015). A cup of water under my bed: A memoir. Boston: Beacon Press.
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