Culture Watch Book Reviews: My Beloved World and Consider the Fork

My Beloved World is a memoir that shines and sings even when narrating the difficult and disturbing events of her family’s poverty, her father’s alcoholism and the onset, at the age of seven, of Sotomayor’s lifetime battle with diabetes. Cecilia Sotomayor

Despite, perhaps because of the diagnoses of diabetes, Sotomayor describes herself as a resilient, mischievous, hard working child whose nickname was Ají (hot pepper). As a youngster she began to thrive at school when Mrs. Reilly, her fifth grade teacher, unleashed Sonia’s competitive spirit. Reilly would put up a gold star on the blackboard when a student performed well. Sotomayor writes that she was “a sucker for those gold stars … determined to collect as many as I could.” She also made a personal vow to get more A’s. In the same year, she was given a pamphlet directed at diabetes patients. Choose a profession. The booklet listed choices such as doctor, lawyer, and teacher. To the young patient’s horror service as a police officer was not possible. This was, she says, “a catastrophe.” Nancy Drew mysteries were a fixture in her reading and, more critically, how she imagined her future. She imagined her adult self as a sleuth, a successful and well-regarded detective. Her Nancy fantasy shattered Sotomayor used the role models on display in the television show Perry Mason to shape another law and order future: she would become a judge. The man behind the bench “called the shots” and personified justice. The die was cast.

Her childhood ambition to become an attorney had, Sotomayor explains, nothing to do with middle-class respectability and comfort.” Rather, she understood the lawyer’s job as helping people and law as a force for good, for protecting communities, upholding order, and resolving conflict. Judges oversaw these noble purposes with “dispassionate wisdom.” Academics might say that for her the judge was high priest, and her courtroom a temple. And indeed, at the conclusion of her memoir Sotomayor invokes religious language when she writes that, for her, the law had not been a career but a vocation.

Sotomayor’s stories of her childhood are engaging, with particular warmth expressed in praise songs for her abuelita, Mercedes, whose unconditional love permitted Sonia to thrive. Her grandmother’s protection gave the young Sonia a sense of safekeeping and the ability to imagine a worthy purpose for her life.

My Beloved World maintains its power as the memoir moves from the Sotomayor’s circumscribed life in the South Bronx to the rich and intellectually competitive world of Princeton and then Yale Law School. Her insights about the gaps in her knowledge and understanding being a function of class and cultural background are not new but remain important lessons as colleges and universities continue to enroll applicants from diverse backgrounds. So, too, are Sotomayor’s thoughtful discussions about the role affirmative action played in her admission to these schools. She underplays the pressure of successfully representing her community yet underscores the relentless tension of knowing that the anti affirmative action “vultures” were circling, “ready to dive when we stumbled.” Judge Sotomayor in robes

The self-selection of material figures as both a necessity and a problem in the genre of memoir. As an author the justice has made selections that are candid; she does not mince words about the places where she stumbled: At Princeton she learned that her writing in English was affected by the use of Spanish language constructions and simply not up to the highest standards. During law school, as a summer hire at the prestigious Paul, Weiss law firm, she failed to make a good impression and was not offered a full-time post-graduation position. And as a new hire in the Manhattan district attorney’s office Sotomayor had to ask a colleague the meaning of an everyday term, voir dire (the process of jury selection).

Sotomayor stayed at the DA’s office for several years with the prospect of becoming a bureau chief and, later, a state court judge. She moved on, however, to private practice with a Manhattan law firm realizing that a deeper understanding of civil law would be necessary if she were to become a federal judge. She made partner in her fourth year. A short time later, with a nod from then New York Senator Daniel Moynihan, she was nominated and confirmed as a federal district court judge in Manhattan. It was 1992, she was thirty-six, and in seventeen years she would become the third woman and first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court of the United States. The improbable dreams stirred by Nancy Drew and Perry Mason were realized.

Justice Sotomayor has said that she wrote this book because being a role model “is the most valuable thing I can do.” It is to her credit that the memoir is, like the justice, unpretentious and welcoming to readers of all ages.

Photographs: Celina Sotomayor, the mother of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, cries as President Barack Obama announces her daughter is the nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, in the East Room of the White House, May 26, 2009. August 12, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Judge Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. May 26, 2009. (Photo by Credit: Stacey Ilys)

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, History, Culture Watch, Entertaining, Gift Shopping, Shop for Home, Legal, Senior Women Web, Articles, Book Reviews, Julia Sneden, Jill Norgren, Authors, What's New Add comments

Culture Watch Book Reviews: My Beloved World and Consider the Fork

More Articles