How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, by Angie Cruz
Angie Cruz’s novel How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water introduces us to Cara Romero, a Dominican woman in her mid-fifties, who is navigating job loss and personal hardships during the Great Recession of 2007 – 2009. Told through a series of government-mandated job counseling sessions, the novel unfolds as Cara recounts her life story with wit, resilience, and unfiltered honesty. Cruz makes good use of humor and oral storytelling traditions in an updated version of the epistolary novel with its intimate look into the protagonist’s life, while touching on themes of immigration, displacement, economic struggle, and the pursuit of dignity in an unforgiving system.
Published in 2022, Cruz’s novel received rave reviews, being named a New York Times Review of Books Notable Book and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, as well as being a Latino Book Awards Gold Medal winner, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates prize, among other accolades.
Cruz’s novel showcases the capacity of literature to open a window for us onto the experience of others and help us relate to them, whether we share superficial similarities or not. Cara Romero will draw you into her effort to regain her footing in her work and personal lives, and her story’s meditation on survival, identity, and the strength found in community is both timeless and freshly relevant.
Regents’ Common Reader Awards
The Regents’ Common Reader Awards provide an opportunity for individual chapters to organize and host a local event or activity based on the common reader. Chapter members do not need to attend the convention to apply. Contact your Regent and you may receive $100 for your event or activity.
Application Guidelines
Organize and host a local event or activity based on this text and apply for award money after your event. Submit to your Regent via email the Regents Fund Request form as well as the following materials in a single PDF:
- A cover letter, signed by the Chapter Advisor (or sent from the Advisor’s email address), confirming that the activity or event took place
- A narrative, not to exceed 500 words, describing the activity or event
- A list of all participating persons or groups
- Pertinent supplemental materials (event program, flyers, website, social media posts, campus news story, etc.)
The Regents’ Common Reader Award is open to all chapters of Sigma Tau Delta. It is completely separate to convention submissions. The Regents hope this award will be a way for chapters in each region to share a convention-related experience even if they are not able to attend the convention. We hope it will encourage relative, text-based activities and events. And, lastly, we hope it will give space to reflect on the power of language both in our own lives and in the lives of others.
Common Reader Convention Awards
Awards of up to $600 will be given at the annual convention for critical essays or other genres of work that deal with the Common Reader. To be eligible, students select in the submission form that their work is on the Common Reader.
Common Reader Archive
2026 – Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward
2025 – When My Brother Was an Aztec, by Natalie Diaz
2024 – Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020, by Carl Phillips
2023 – The Rock Eaters, by Brenda Peynado
2022 – Dear Martin, by Nic Stone
2021 – Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, by Karen Auvinen
2020 – Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, by Terry Tempest Williams
2019 – Work & Days, by Tess Taylor
2018 – The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henríquez
2017 – Almost Famous Women, by Megan Mayhew Bergman
2016 – The Soul Thief, by Charles Baxter
2015 – From Sand Creek, by Simon J. Ortiz
2014 – We the Animals, by Justin Torres
2013 – Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman
2012 – Bellocq’s Ophelia, by Natasha Trethewey
2011 – Black Ice, by Lorene Cary
2010 – Song for Night (Akashic Books, 2007), by Chris Abani
2009 – Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, by Michael Perry
2008 – The Secrets of a Fire King, by Kim Edwards
