My Beloved World: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

Sonia soon becomes friends with Margarita Rosa, who’s a few years older and a role model. They often study together, and Margarita encourages Sonia to join Acción Puertorriqueña, the Latino student group. Sonia says that it’s important to have a place where a person feels like they belong and doesn’t feel like a stranger. She finds that with Acción Puertorriqueña. The Daily Princetonian publishes letters often that insist students admitted due to affirmative action don’t belong, so the pressure for Sonia and her minority peers to succeed is immense.

Sonia, Margarita, and Ken all feel a bit like they were admitted on accident. Because they all feel so uneasy, the group focuses on freshman admissions. It’s the early days of affirmative action, especially in the Ivy Leagues, so no minority freshmen have alumni or wealthy parents. Instead, most minority freshmen look to their immediate predecessors, as Sonia looked to Ken and to the Latinx students who showed her around Yale. The group also protests, but Sonia focuses her efforts on increasing hiring of Hispanics at Princeton. Sonia asserts that the administration genuinely wants to be more diverse, but they don’t know how to reach out to Puerto Ricans or Chicanx students. The administration finally listens when Acción Puertorriqueña files a complaint. A month later, the school hires a Hispanic dean of student affairs.

The Mexican Americans have their own group, but often they join up with Acción Puertorriqueña on issues or for parties. Eventually, Acción Puertorriqueña adds “y Amigos” to the end of its name to draw in other minority groups. The minority groups form their own governance board and Sonia sits on the board for a while. However, she doesn’t want to simply concern herself with minority issues and self-segregate. To branch out, she serves on the student-faculty Discipline Committee.

Sonia begins to find herself and where she fits into the wider world when she works with Professor Winn to run a course on Puerto Rican history. She learns about Puerto Rican’s tragic colonial history and the betrayal that Puerto Ricans felt once Spain ceded it to the U.S. Most important, Sonia reads an anthropological study of a family that goes from San Juan to New York. Most Puerto Ricans find the book offensive, but Sonia also sees her family reflected in it. She recognizes, though, that the book fails to appreciate Puerto Rican culture and the people’s resilience. In class, students fight about whether Puerto Rico should be independent, a commonwealth, or a state.

Mami and Sonia take a trip to Puerto Rico. This is the first time that Sonia sees the island as an adult and after her history class, what she sees makes more sense. She can see that there’s poverty, but there’s also old money. It’s an election year, and Sonia is awed that so many people are politically involved. It contrasts wildly with home, where Puerto Ricans feel like their votes don’t count. On the island, Puerto Ricans don’t feel like a minority—they feel entirely American. Sonia realizes that if the community in New York wants to escape poverty, they must look to the island and its pride.

For a final project, Professor Winn suggests a family oral history. Sonia enthusiastically works on it and records as many conversations and stories with family as she can. Mami opens up about her childhood and her time in the army. Hearing her family’s stories, the history of the island comes to life—reading about what women who sewed handkerchiefs made, Sonia thinks of Titi Aurora and Mami. Abuelita’s first husband fought in World War I and then rolled tobacco. Sonia learns that her family may be descended from Puerto Rican pioneers. Her family prospers and struggles as the island’s economy changes. She insists that even as her family made their lives in New York, they remained Puerto Rican.

One way they maintained their links to Puerto Rico is through language—though Alfred talks about Spanish being a curse. Miriam agrees; she’s currently working on a degree in bilingual education so she can be the teacher she wishes she had. Sonia suddenly realizes that students who don’t understand what’s going on at school have no way of knowing that they’re intelligent; the language barrier holds them back. Recently, Sonia found these recordings. They’re embarrassing now—she takes offense at her family’s prejudices and sounds like a know-it-all. Sonia writes her senior thesis on the island’s first elected governor and his modernization efforts. She feels she needs to know that Puerto Rico can birth leaders.

One day, Sonia reads in the paper that a Hispanic man who speaks no English ended up on a flight that was diverted to Newark. No one could explain in Spanish what happened, so they took the angry man to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital until a family member showed up. Sonia is incensed. She calls the hospital and learns that there are many patients there who don’t speak English and don’t have access to translators. She finds this cruel, so she organizes a volunteer program to install volunteers there to translate. They also throw parties. She finds the work surprisingly satisfying. While Dolores plays guitar and sings at a party, Sonia watches a nonverbal woman tap her foot.