My Beloved World

My Beloved World is the story of Sotomayor’s journey from the projects to the Supreme Court. She states that her purpose in telling her story is to answer questions she has been asked about how she overcame adversity to reach the highest position available in her field.

Her earliest challenges are her diabetes diagnosis and her parents’ volatile marriage, which leaves her feeling she needs to take care of herself because she cannot depend on her parents. She resolves to teach herself how to give herself her insulin shot. The process has many steps (sterilizing the needle, waiting for it too cool, ensuring there are no bubbles in the syringe, and injecting it properly). She tackles each one methodically and masters the process, which teaches her patience and discipline. This methodical, step-by-step approach becomes her blueprint for tackling every subsequent challenge in her life. When she realizes she does not know how to study in fifth grade, she recruits a classmate to teach her the process. When she sees that her academic skills lag behind those of her classmates at Princeton, she analyzes her weak areas and devises a system for addressing them. When she loses her first case as an ADA, she breaks down what went wrong and corrects it.

Though the formula seems simple, Sotomayor believes that her success is a product of her strong will, optimism, and perseverance, which she sees as gifts. In Chapter Twenty-Six, she reflects on her belief that she is meant to use these gifts to benefit her community, a concept whose center is her Puerto Rican neighborhood but that radiates out, as she grows in her personal and professional life, to encompass a much broader circle. Ultimately all Americans are part of this larger community by virtue of their role in defining what it means to be American. Sotomayor suggests that the various communities that make up America are interdependent in the same way she describes institutions and individuals being interdependent in Chapter Twenty-Two: the health of the whole depends on the health of its component parts.

This interdependence is ultimately what propels her forward through every challenge she faces: she knows that she is not acting for herself, just as she knows she did not succeed alone. The support of friends and family enabled her achievement every step of the way, she says. Thus, she believes the way to overcome adversity is to have a higher purpose, to achieve not for one’s own gain but in order to make the world better. This has been the source of her strong will for as long as she can remember. For example, learning to give herself her insulin shot was also a way to help diffuse the tension between her parents.

To draw on the strength of community, Sotomayor believes people must be able to see themselves in each other and have empathy. As a lawyer, she can connect and convince a jury when she understands how they think and what they will find compelling. It is a lesson she first learns in Forensics Club, when arguing the case of Kitty Genovese, whose neighbors did not act in her defense because they saw themselves as passive bystanders. Working in a rough South Bronx neighborhood, she suggests police and residents act as adversaries in the game of survival rather than partners in creating a functional community. This affirms her commitment to building bridges, something she strives to do through working both with Hispanic and what she calls “mainstream” organizations—Acción Puertorriqueña and the Discipline Committee at Princeton; LANA and Graduate and Professional Student Center at Yale; and PRLDEF and CDF while at the DA’s Office. Communication, a shared purpose, and a willingness to engage with and strive to understand differing opinions are what can bring people together.