My Beloved World: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

Sonia and Kevin set about playing house in New Haven. Kevin applies to medical school and contemplates studying law, but he’s unsure of what he wants to do. He takes a job as a lab assistant. They find an apartment a mile from campus and adopt a dog. Kevin and Sonia split chores and Sonia learns how to cook through calls with Marguerite’s mother. Marguerite visits often with her future husband, Tom.

Yale Law School is uniquely small, and Sonia’s class is brilliant. Fellow students have already earned PhDs in philosophy, math, and physics; there are several Rhodes scholars and an opera singer. Grading is pass-fail and students aren’t ranked. Sonia works hard, but she knows she could be humiliated at any point—teachers teach by interrogating students. She knows this will prepare them to be lawyers, but she still feels out of her depth. She can follow arguments but can’t come up with them herself. Because of this, Sonia realizes that to become a lawyer, she’ll have to learn a new way of thinking.

Sonia doesn’t feel isolated at Yale, in part because the first-year students are divided into small groups. She also feels connected to the other female students, as they’re still a minority. Her best friends, however, are Felix Lopez, Rudy Aragon, Drew Ryce, and George Keys. They look out for Sonia and form close friendships with Kevin, too. Sonia and Rudy co-chair LANA, the Latino, Asian, and Native American student association, where they focus on the same issues of recruitment that Sonia did at Princeton. Drew runs the bar for grad students and gives Sonia a job as a bouncer. Sonia invites all four home for Thanksgiving, and they all love Mami.

At Yale, Sonia meets her first true mentor. She learns best by watching others and believes others always have something to teach, but mentorship takes this to the next level. She meets José Cabranes through a Princeton friend a year behind her, who’s working on issues of U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans. José is an expert on the topic, so when the friend meets with José, he invites Sonia along. José offers Sonia a job doing research for his book and shows her what it’s like to do pro bono work. He’s generous to everyone and shows Sonia that it’s possible to be a successful lawyer and be openly, proudly Puerto Rican. She realizes she can’t imitate him, so she listens to his advice seriously—and never follows it.

Without grades, students distinguish themselves by getting on The Yale Law Journal through writing a note, which is a thorough paper. Notes must be written on an unresolved legal problem, and it’s not a simple task. Through her work with José, Sonia begins to see Puerto Rican citizenship in legal terms and sees that there are lots of questions about it. She decides to focus on the legality of statehood and on Puerto Rico’s seabed rights. Her note is accepted and published.

Out of the blue one day, Rudy tells Sonia that she argues like a guy. Sonia is seething immediately, but Rudy and Felix insist it’s a good thing when she speaks in class. Sonia tells the reader that in a way, Rudy is right; she isn’t apologetic and tentative, but she doesn’t speak in class. She speaks up the first time in her third year to correct a professor’s math—twice. Her confidence increases not long after, during a mock trial competition. Sonia notices one man on the jury who seems totally unengaged and approaches him after. Though he doesn’t want to tell her what he didn’t like about her approach, he eventually admits he doesn’t like “brassy Jewish women.”

Over Sonia’s second summer at Yale, she gets a job as a summer associate at a top Manhattan law firm. They ask her to contribute to a brief for a huge antitrust case, but she struggles to formulate good arguments. She eventually passes her assignment to a more experienced associate, and when she sees what he writes, she realizes how poorly she did. She knows she’s not thinking like a lawyer yet and to make matters worse, the firm doesn’t offer her a job. This is unusual, and Sonia feels like a failure. To figure out what she did wrong, she signs up for an antitrust class and works on writing briefs. The trauma of this failure haunts Sonia until she becomes a judge.

Sonia’s paycheck means that she and Kevin can take a honeymoon. Their road trip is eye-opening as Sonia sees landmarks she’s only ever read about. She takes the time to think about her future. Her classmates want to make lots of money. Though Sonia sees that it’s important for minorities to reach the upper echelons, she doesn’t want to just make money. She considers José’s suggestion that she clerk for a judge, but it sounds too academic. (This, she realizes later, is a mistake; now, she encourages minority students to prioritize clerking.) She considers the State Department, as the public service aspect is appealing, but she realizes that this possibility will be dependent on where Kevin gets accepted to grad school. She still wants to be a judge, but this remains a dream. They end their trip with visits to Dolores and Ken Moy.

Back in New Haven, Sonia heads out to a recruiting dinner with the Washington firm Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge. A Princeton friend, Scott, encourages Sonia to attend the dinner. At dinner, the partner asks Sonia if she believes in affirmative action. He insinuates that minorities can’t be as successful as their white peers and implies that Sonia doesn’t belong at Yale. Scott apologizes to Sonia after the dinner. By the next day, George, Rudy, and Felix are ready to punch the partner, but Sonia goes to the private recruiting interview anyway. The partner is pleasant, but he insults Sonia again when she calls out his racism of the night before.

Sonia decides to address a formal complaint to Yale’s career office, challenging the firm’s right to recruit on campus. The complaint sparks interest across the school and eventually, the country. Sonia is glad to bring the partner’s behavior to light, but she also wants a career in law—she doesn’t want to be blacklisted. A tribunal negotiates a full apology from the firm. When everything calms down, Sonia remains firm in her belief that affirmative action is a good thing. She may have been accepted through a “special door,” but she still worked hard to earn her place—and she succeeded. Junior experiences similar success thanks to affirmative action, but again, it’s his hard work that gets him through. When Sonia’s note for The Yale Law Journal is ready for publication, the editors send a press release. The note is well received and makes Sonia feel ready to enter the world.