Growing up, Sotomayor’s family situation was difficult and anxiety inducing, but she nevertheless goes to great lengths in her memoir to acknowledge all the ways in which her family supported her along her journey. As she gets older, marries, and ultimately divorces, Sotomayor extends this idea of a loving, supportive family to the friends she meets in college, law school, and in her jobs that follow. Alongside her optimism and tenacity, Sotomayor positions the supportive family and friends who become chosen family as essential elements of her success. However, Sotomayor doesn’t simply stop at giving credit to the people who have supported her throughout her life. Rather, she makes the case that if one wants to cultivate a rich, supportive network of friends and family, it’s important to be a good friend and family member in return, even when this takes work.
Sotomayor’s early experiences with her family form her baseline for what familial relationships should look like; namely, she learns that they should be supportive, loyal, and extensive. Though she acknowledges that her family isn’t perfect—Papi is an alcoholic, Mami seems cold and unfeeling at times, and Abuelita unfairly blames Mami for things that aren’t her fault—the vast network of aunts and uncles that care for Sotomayor, her little brother, Junior, and their numerous cousins are nevertheless strong and loyal. They come together to support Mami and her children after Papi dies when Sotomayor is nine, and even as Mami moves her children from housing project to housing project, the rest of the extended family eventually follows. No matter where Sotomayor goes, she’s surrounded by a loving, caring community that will always go above and beyond for those they call family.
As Sotomayor gets older and especially after Papi’s death, Sotomayor begins to rely more on Mami and her friends from school. Importantly, Mami is thrilled that during high school, their apartment is where Sotomayor and her friends congregate to hang out, plan their runs for student government, and sneak beer—and Mami believes that providing this close, supportive environment is what keeps Sotomayor and her friends from getting into trouble, as so many in their drug-riddled neighborhood do. Thus, by the time that Sotomayor leaves the Bronx for Princeton, she understands the importance of finding a community of friends and family for herself, no matter where she is. This is why, when Sotomayor introduces each new phase of her life, she begins by describing the friends she made during the coming episode. Even more important to her than what she did are the friends she made—many of whom, at some point or another, are invited to Mami’s apartment in the Bronx for Thanksgiving, an invitation that drives home their closeness and importance in Sotomayor’s life.
As Sotomayor’s marriage with her high school sweetheart, Kevin, dissolves and as she learns more about Mami’s early life, she begins to see even more clearly that it’s absolutely essential to have family, friends, or both to draw on in difficult times—it’s impossible to go through any major upheaval alone. Mami’s early life was difficult and lonely; Mami’s mother was mentally unwell, her father was absent, and her older siblings cared for her. Marrying Papi meant marrying into a huge and complex group of new friends and family members (though Sotomayor makes it clear that Abuelita, Papi’s mother, always saw in-laws more as friends than as family members). For the first time, Mami was able to enjoy the company and the safety of being around people who, for the most part, supported her, admired her, and helped her raise her children. While Mami finds this community as she enters a marriage, Sotomayor cultivates it as she exits hers; she leans heavily on her friends, both old and new, as she moves out of her apartment she shared with Kevin and back in with Mami. Particularly after her marriage ends, Sotomayor comes to understand more clearly than ever that one doesn’t need to embark on the process of creating their own family through marriage and having children. Though part of her choice to not have children is due to the risks posed by her diabetes, Sotomayor nevertheless remains firm that even in her role as a beloved biological or chosen aunt, she can still make a positive impression in the lives of her friends’ and family members’ children.
After her divorce, Sotomayor deepens her understanding of what she suggests is the most important element of a relationship with a friend or family member: the necessity of being open and trusting. She and Kevin divorce after Sotomayor has spent several years working at the DA’s office, where her work makes it easy to treat everyone with suspicion and cynicism. Thus, Sotomayor vows both to leave the job and to work on her own attitude as to not alienate her friends and family. Most importantly, Sotomayor vows to work on her relationship with Mami. Though Mami has consistently been supportive, she and Sotomayor have never been particularly close. However, as Sotomayor practices being more open and honest with Mami, Mami does the same in return. Sotomayor comes to realize that if she’s open and trusting with her friends and family, they’ll treat her with the same openness and trust—and that this is important for more reasons than just the relationships themselves. Sotomayor ultimately realizes that throughout her life, she’s kept her diabetes diagnosis quiet from most of her friends and coworkers. Though this comes from an understandable place, given her family’s poor reaction when she was diagnosed as a child, several dangerous low blood sugar episodes that she survives only because of luck or because someone who knew about her diabetes was able to advocate for her make it clear just how important it is to be open with one’s friends. By becoming more open about her diabetes and her medical needs, Sotomayor shows that friendships and familial relationships must be rooted in openness and trust—otherwise, it’s impossible for those relationships to be truly supportive.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Family and Friendship ThemeTracker
Family and Friendship Quotes in My Beloved World
If my parents couldn’t pick up the syringe without panicking, an even darker prospect loomed: my grandmother wouldn’t be up to the job either. That would be the end of my weekly sleepovers at her apartment and my only escape from the gloom at home. It then dawned on me: if I needed to have these shots every day for the rest of my life, the only way I’d survive was to do it myself.
I have the carried the memory of that day as a grave caution. There was a terrible permanence to the state that my mother and her father had reached. My mother’s pain would never heal, the ice between them would never thaw, because they would never find a way to acknowledge it. Without acknowledgement and communication, forgiveness was beyond reach. Eventually, I would recognize the long shadow of this abandonment in my own feelings toward my mother, and I would determine not to repeat what I had seen. The closeness that I share now with my mother is deeply felt, but we learned it slowly and with effort, and for fear of the alternative.
The heroes were admirable if flawed, as compelling as any comic book superhero to a kid who was hungry for escape, [...] these immortals seemed more realistic, more accessible, than the singular, all-forgiving, unchanging God of my Church. It was in that book of Dr. Fisher’s, too, that I learned that my own name is a version of Sophia, meaning wisdom. I glowed with that discovery. And I never did return the book.
Now suddenly lessons seemed easier. It certainly didn’t hurt that I had spent the entire summer vacation with my nose in a book, hiding from my mother’s gloom, but there was another reason too. It was around that time that my mother made an effort to speak some English at home.
But the more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing. In retrospect, I can see how important that pattern would become for me: how readily I’ve sought out mentors, asking guidance from professors or colleagues, and in every friendship soaking up eagerly whatever that friend could teach me.
Our snitching often entailed phone calls to the hospital that must have driven my mother nuts, not to mention her supervisors, bless their forbearance. I’ve always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.
The differences were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were nothing compared with what we had in common. As I lay in bed at night, the sky outside my window reflecting the city’s dim glow, I thought about Abuelita’s fierce loyalty to blood. But what really binds people as family? The way they shore themselves up with stories; the way siblings can feud bitterly but still come through for each other; how an untimely death, a child gone before a parent, shakes the very foundations [...]
Minority kids, however, had no one but their few immediate predecessors: the first to scale the ivy-covered wall against the odds, just one step ahead ourselves, we would hold the ladder steady for the next kid with more talent than opportunity. The blacks, Latinos, and Asians at Princeton went back to their respective high schools, met with guidance counselors, and recruited promising students they knew personally.
The experience of hearing my Princeton reading echoed in family recollections had the effect of both making the history more vivid and endowing life as lived with the dignity of something worth studying. When, for instance, I had read that “a woman who takes ten hours to finish two dozen handkerchiefs earns 24 cents for them,” I could picture Titi Aurora holding the needle, my mother leaning over the iron.
It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted. What if my father hadn’t died, if I hadn’t spent that sad summer reading, if my mother’s English had been no better than my aunts’? Would I have made it to Princeton?
Certainly, no one could accuse me of being a soft touch, but talking with Dawn always reminded me of the human costs of my success, the impact on an individual’s life and his family. Her perspective allowed me to trust the voice in my own head that occasionally whispered: how about exercising a little discretion; having a little faith in human nature?
I’ve always turned the families of friends into family of my own. The roots of this practice are buried deep in my childhood, in the broad patterns of Puerto Rican culture, in the particular warmth of Abuelita’s embrace and her charged presence at the center of my world, the village of aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, and compadres scattered across the Bronx. I’d observe how the tribe extended its boundaries, with each marriage adding not just a new member but a whole new clan to ours.
Ultimately, I accept that there is no perfect substitute for the claim that a parent and a child have on each other’s heart. But families can be made in other ways, and I marvel at the support and inspiration I’ve derived from the ones I’ve built of interlocking circles of friends. In their constant embrace I have never felt alone.
Still, each time I found myself in a blood sugar crisis, I couldn’t help but notice that some unlikely intervention had saved my life, whether a friend just happening by or phoning out of the blue, or, one time, Dawn’s little Rocky, who, finding me unconscious, barked furiously, refusing to be calmed, until he drew attention where it was needed.
