As soon as I finished the last page of A Cup of Water Under My Bed, I pulled out my phone and searched the words “card reader” into Yelp. Then I tried “mãe de santa,” then “candomblé” then “santería,” but none of the terms really summed up the kind of guidance I had brushed up against through my mother, my cousins, my aunts. In her book, Daisy Hernandez reminds us that often, we do not know how to name or thank the women who shape our journey. The women her parents sought out for spiritual support were referred to as simply “las mujeres que saben,” in her house, the “women who know.”

I eventually found a woman named Yolanda ...