49 pages • 1 hour read
Angie CruzHow Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Session Four”
Cara worries about her finances when the supervisor arrives for apartment inspections. When the supervisor finds an unbolted air conditioner, Lulú storms in and accuses him of ignoring a leak in her ceiling, and her fiery Leo temperament prevents him from citing her. Cara believes that management will evict long-term residents for code violations to offer vacated apartments to white people for higher leases. Management has already cited her neighbor, Tita, and evicted her into a smaller, more expensive apartment. Tita now works nights caring for an elderly woman, who makes her sleep on a yoga mat.
Tita’s daughter, Cecelia, has a developmental disability and cannot stay alone during the day. At night, the residents take turns watching Cecelia. Cara does not let the new tenants call the police when Cecelia cries, fearing that Cecelia will be taken away. Meanwhile, Lulú worries about Adonis, who has lost his house and his job at the bank. Her unemployment has run out, and she is too young to qualify for the Senior Workforce Program.
In the Career Skills Matcher form that follows, Cara discovers that she is a “helper” and a “humanitarian” who is good at problem-solving and inventing. The test recommends three jobs that Cara will not qualify for because they all require advanced degrees. Her caseworker includes a job posting for a position as a housekeeper, since Cara cleans for la Vieja Caridad. Interview tips from The Job You Want & Co. follow, emphasizing the importance of specific but concise answers.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Session Five”
Cara apologizes for skipping the housekeeping interview. She believes that the hour-long commute would interfere with her duties to her neighbors. Lulú needs their morning coffee routine to combat depression, Ángela’s children need care after school, and Cara cleans for la Vieja Caridad and serves her dinner daily. Cara requests a job in the neighborhood, like the hospital cafeteria where Hernán is head cook. She believes that her cooking lessons and frugal habits have allowed Hernán to create hospital food that nourishes and pleases despite the tiny budget allowed for meals.
Cara agrees with the Career Skills Matcher and uses her experience as an impromptu labor organizer as proof that she is inventive and organized. Meanwhile, Lulú’s work at the factory is slow because she has repetitive use injuries. The doctor tells Lulú that all the women must take breaks to prevent further strain, but the bosses require quotas. Cara tells the women that they can steal breaks to stay safe and still meet the required quotas. She suggests that the women each rotate breaks throughout the day, and when the faster workers meet their quotas, they will help the slower workers to catch up.
She also uses her problem-solving skills to get Lulú’s apartment fixed when the ceiling falls in. She makes Lulú lie down with the plaster, takes pictures, and then gets the supervisor. When he tries to get Lulú to sign an indemnity, Cara advises Lulú to talk to her lawyer, scaring him away. From this experience, Cara concludes that she would be a great disaster planning director.
However, the Career Skills Matcher missed many talents, such as her ability to smell sickness. Cara worries because she smells sickness on la Vieja Caridad. She has already helped Glendaliz to detect her cancer early, and she even detected her brother Rafa’s diabetes. After Rafa’s wife Miguelina leaves him for his drinking and abuse, he moves in with Cara, who notices the ketone smell. Like la Vieja Caridad, he does not follow up with the doctor despite her warnings. In the Employer Questionnaire that follows her live-in nanny interview, Cara is deemed incompatible with the position.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Session Six”
Cara deflects when questioned about her latest interview, claiming that Alicia the Psychic tells her that because Mercury is in retrograde, now is the time for reflection rather than action. She reflects on her lover, José, who ran the Everything Store before the White People Store drove him out of business. Although his stroke ended their affair, she claims that the arrangement allowed them to enjoy a passionate relationship without the drawback of living with each other’s faults.
She admits that she performed poorly in the interview because she does not want to live in another person’s house. In addition to Ángela and la Vieja Caridad, Lulú depends on her, even if she must pretend that she is doing Cara a favor by receiving Cara’s help. Lulú is always twisting their relationship, but Cara permits Lulú to do this because she understands that Leos are prideful. She also reveals that Adonis’s situation is far worse than they knew. He pretended to work for three months before admitting that he was unemployed, incurring debt for his children’s unpaid private school tuition and other expenses. He, his children, and his wife, Patricia, have now moved in with Lulú to make ends meet. Lulú is drowning with humiliation and new responsibilities, and Cara must stay in Washington Heights to support her friend.
The billing invoice that follows shows that Cara has paid only a quarter toward her rent and owes more in back rent. An invoice for a crown shows that Cara also has medical debt at a high interest rate. The latest job opportunity is for a security guard job at a school.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
While the novel’s early chapters are focused on establishing the intricate social connections of Cara’s community and her past, Cruz uses this section of the novel to develop the ongoing external conflicts that beset her and her close friends and family. Once again, Cruz uses the contrast between Cara’s complex cultural paradigms and stereotypical American paradigms to expose the dehumanization inherent in the American institution of work. Because the narrative is set during the Great Recession, Cara’s economic situation is extremely precarious, and by illustrating her many difficulties, Cruz implicitly questions the validity of Maintaining Hope in the American Dream. As the pressure from debt, gentrification, and unemployment grows to nearly unbearable levels, Cruz presents Cara’s dire economic straits as a product of biased American systems, not of her ability, skills, or willingness to work. Cara’s unpaid labor and caregiving in her community are proof that she works hard for the benefit of her community, but she also expects her employment to serve her as well, just as she believes that her community work will be reciprocal. For example, she cares for la Vieja Caridad in hopes that a neighbor will one day do the same for her. This approach proves that Cara lives by a version of the American Dream despite her justified distrust of the American systems that disadvantage her. Even when Cara rejects work, it is not out of laziness, as common stereotyping about immigrants often implies. Instead, her refusal represents an empowering assertion of her own identity as a vital component of her community. Thus, Cruz exposes the flaw in the American belief that any job opportunity is valid and that a person’s most vital contribution to their society is as a worker. Cara cannot accept work that removes her from her support network, and the narrative makes it clear that she should not have to take random jobs just to prove her worth to employers.
Unfortunately, to employers who are using reductive and culturally biased tools to judge employability, Cara is deemed to be nearly unemployable. In addition to her nonstandard English communication, her 30 years of factory experience yield few transferable skills because service industry jobs have replaced the manufacturing industry in America. For work-obsessed Americans, a two-year employment gap like Cara’s is difficult for even the most skilled, culturally attuned, and educated workers to explain. Although Cara is capable, hardworking, and fastidious, she lacks the employment record, formal experience, and references to prove that she can do housekeeping or provide care for others. The documentation that she does have, such as the restraining order or her debt records, reduces her to her worst moments and greatest misfortunes. By including these documents after Cara’s rich and varied stories, Cruz creates a palpable tension between Cara’s proven resourcefulness and charm and the negative assumptions that her documents emphasize. This contrast exposes the lie of American meritocracy and condemns the dehumanizing processes that Americans must endure while seeking employment. However, despite the inherent unfairness of her situation, Cara chooses not to dwell on her misfortunes.
Because Cara represses her anger over her deferred prosperity and uses her responsibilities to others as a coping mechanism, she obliquely expresses her own financial worries in the guise of concern for her neighbors’ similar difficulties. For example, Lulú’s son, Adonis, a finance worker who lost both his home and his job to the collapse of the housing market bubble, confirms Cara’s worst fears about the American Dream. Despite having official documents, assimilating as a citizen, and securing a respectable job, Adonis suffers the harsh reality of having his livelihood snatched from him by unfair and predatory economic forces, and Cara sees this misfortune as proof that the American Dream of prosperity in exchange for hard work is deeply flawed. Similarly, her neighbor, Tita, and her daughter, Cecelia—who has a disability—fall victim to weaponized documentation as the aptly named Management Without a Heart uses leasing violations to oust people from rent-controlled apartments. Because the new management caters to wealthier white clientele and allows them to rent spaces as short-term vacation rentals while cracking down on older residents who sublet, Cara knows that the systems that oppress her also unfairly benefit others. Thus, Cara sees the American Dream as a moving goal post, and this realization leads her to mistrust American conventions.
However, because she is unable to directly voice her doubts, Cara uses a symbolic anecdote of a time in Hato Mayor when the Dominican government failed to issue a hurricane warning for fear of panic. As she explains, residents suffered great losses and, in their paranoia, convinced themselves that another hurricane was imminent. Everyone believed in the signs of disaster and prepared, but no hurricane ever came. Cara believes that no matter how hard a person works or how prepared they make themselves, fate can undermine a person’s best efforts. For Cara, Tita and Adonis are proof of the pernicious barriers that stymie immigrants and thwart their attainment of the American Dream despite their willingness to work multiple jobs and care for neighbors. Although Cara’s resentment only simmers in her cutting remarks about Ángela and Fernando and their unwillingness to acknowledge her sacrifices, her anger over the deferred promises of prosperity in payment for her hard work drives the fear and hostility that damages her relationships in later chapters.
