My Beloved World follows the life of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor from her impoverished childhood in housing projects in the Bronx; through college at Princeton and law school at Yale; and ultimately, to her appointment to a federal judgeship at 38 years old. Throughout her memoir, Sotomayor attributes her remarkable achievements to her enduring sense of optimism and her unwavering willingness to work hard in the face of adversity. While she acknowledges that there are lots of reasons why a person might not be able to achieve the kind of success she’s enjoyed, she nevertheless makes the case that to achieve one’s dreams, one much approach life with a combination of optimism and determination.
Sotomayor is upfront about the fact that she believes her own optimistic nature is both an innate personality trait and a reaction to adverse circumstances as a child. To illustrate this, Sotomayor opens her memoir with the story of being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age seven. At the time of her diagnosis in 1962, diabetes was essentially a death sentence, so it only intensified Sotomayor’s already fraught home life. But rather than helplessly listen to her parents fight about who was going to give her the insulin shot, the young Sotomayor took matters into her own hands and learned how to administer the shot herself. Sotomayor then explains how her parents’ constant fighting, fueled by her Papi’s alcoholism, made her constantly vigilant and instilled in her a sense of independence and self-preservation. From an early age, she learned to treat everything—from a scary health diagnosis, to difficulties at school or fighting parents—as a problem to solve. This framing is something she holds onto throughout her life, as it’s one that enables her to frame adversity in a way that feels more manageable and approachable.
However, Sotomayor also points out that her success cannot be attributed simply to her optimism and her proclivity for problem solving; rather, there’s also an element of luck—and it’s necessary to accept help from others. When Papi dies two years after Sotomayor’s diagnosis, her home life changes dramatically and becomes infinitely more supportive and less stressful. After a stern talking-to from Sotomayor, Mami throws herself into her work and taking care of her children, which allows Sotomayor to focus on doing well in school. This, Sotomayor acknowledges, was a major stroke of luck—one that not all children experience especially after the death of a parent. Sotomayor has been so successful thanks to these strokes of luck and the fact that Mami has consistently supported her daughter.
Additionally, Sotomayor recognizes the value of intentionally putting herself in difficult situations so she can practice and improve, something she does most notably when she takes her first post-law school job at the New York City DA’s office. There, everything is difficult—the nature and sheer volume of the work means that new hires must figure out how to navigate via a combination of trial and error (when they’re on their own in front of a judge) and by asking for help from more experienced individuals in the office whenever they can. During this time, however, Sotomayor discovers that part of retaining one’s optimistic outlook means being able to look at one’s life and identify areas that are hindering that outlook—which in this case, happens to be the job itself. As a prosecutor, Sotomayor has to approach every case she takes as though every defendant is guilty. And though they often are, she ultimately realizes that this outlook makes her cynical and cold to the people around her. Thus, Sotomayor concludes that sheer determination isn’t always enough—one must balance their determination by organizing their life, to the greatest extent possible, in such a way as to preserve their mental health and sense of optimism.
As Sotomayor dives into the various qualities and circumstances that helped propel her to success, she also considers why some people in her position struggle—and for the most part, she suggests that tenacity and the willingness to work tirelessly is the one thing that sets her apart from others. Her most frequent comparison is to her same-age cousin, Nelson, who she describes as the smarter and luckier one when they were children; Sotomayor envied his involved father and his healthier family situation, and Abuelita loved both her and Nelson more than her other grandchildren. However, this didn’t stop Nelson from getting involved with drugs in high school, dropping out of every college program he tried, and ultimately dying from one of the first identified cases of HIV contracted through sharing needles. How, Sotomayor asks, could someone as poised for success as Nelson succumb to such an avoidable fate? Though Sotomayor acknowledges that there are a variety of reasons or circumstances beyond an individual’s control that make success less likely, Nelson suggests plainly that his intelligence wasn’t enough to guarantee success when he didn’t have the desire to sit down and apply himself to his studies or a job. With this, Sotomayor makes it clear that being successful in life and being able to tackle adversity isn’t as simple as just being optimistic or just having supportive family to offer encouragement. Rather, people have a greater chance of success when they have the drive to apply themselves to whatever task is in front of them.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Optimism, Determination, and Adversity ThemeTracker
Optimism, Determination, and Adversity 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.
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.
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?
Guidance of senior colleagues would add seasoning over time, but meanwhile we would need every scrap of what scant training would be provided during our first few weeks. I wasn’t the only one among us with minimal background in criminal law [...] But even if I had devoted all my studies to the finer points of the field, there remained essential lessons inaccessible in the classroom or from books and acquired only through the fiery baptism of the courtroom.
Trained in suspicion, skilled at cross-examining, you will look for the worst in people and you will find it. I’d felt from the beginning that these impulses were at odds with my essential optimism, my abiding faith in human nature and its enduring potential for redemption. But now I could see the signs that I too was hardening, and I didn’t like what I saw.
Call it what you like: discipline, determination, perseverance, the force of will. Even apart from his saying so, I knew that it had made all the difference in my life. [...]
What Nelson saw driving me arises from a different kind of aspiration: the desire to do for others, to help make things right for them.
“I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me. None of it has ever been easy. You have no idea how hard Princeton was for me at the beginning, but I figured out how to do well there and ended up being accepted to one of the best law schools in the country. At Yale, the DA’s Office, Pavia & Harcourt—wherever I’ve gone, I’ve honestly never felt fully prepared at the outset. Yet each time I’ve survived, I’ve learned, and I’ve thrived.”
