My Beloved World Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00AZKVZVS | Format: PDF
My Beloved World Description
Audie Award Finalist, Solo Narration - Female, 2013
Audie Award Finalist, Biography/Memoir, 2013
The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.
Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney's office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of 40. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 27 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: January 15, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00AZKVZVS
Memoirs today come out of a black hole, many of them tainted by allusions to fact later revealed to be the heady stuff of fiction. It has happened so often the genre, it seems, doesn't know what it wants to be. So it is refreshing right out of the box to run into the preface of Justice Sotomayor, who lays down her rules for writing...rules of engagement, as it were. She takes as firm a stand as we are likely to read against blended characters, and a reader gets the impression there isn't going to be a recall of this book, a retraction, let alone a major scandal involving facts that turn out to be chimera. Considering the disasters we've come to expect from memoir, it's a great start.
I winced when the Justice gave herself an insulin injection on 60 Minutes; the incident repeats itself in the opening chapter, one that it reads more like a Dennis Lehane sequence, and the only thing keeping it from continuing on in this manner are the interjections, the lessons of a lived life, that every so often bubble up and infuse the text with didactic mannerisms. But even with them, the text flows easily, readers are engulfed in the lustrous prose because the language is steeped in verisimilitude with its seances, Abuelita and bisabuela, the neuropathy of a father bathed in alcoholism - the characters all alive, vivid, and brilliantly real. At some moments, you could be in the magical world of Marquez, as in: "vines snaked under iron fences and up balustrades. Chickens scrabbled under hibiscus bushes and bright yellow canario flowers. I watched the afternoon rains pour down like a curtain...". In other places, the regret of Joan Didion: "ballet class was a brief torture.
I did not quite know what to expect regarding this memoir by Justice Sotomayor of her pre-judicial life. As a student of the Court for 40 years or so, a lawyer for 35 years, and a trained political scientist, I have found judicial biographies and the few judicial memoirs highly insightful into the character and actions of particular Justices. Justice Sotomayor is certainly the least known of the current Court, at least to me, and I was pleasantly surprised how absolutely candid her book is. It tells one a great deal about her, her background, and her character. The only other candid and insightful memoir that compares with this one is Justice Thomas' "My Grandfather's Son," distinctive for its remarkable honesty and perspective on his thinking and the factors that shaped it. A number of her topics stand out:
First, she affords the reader a remarkable perspective on affirmative action, which she readily admits touched upon her own life in terms of Princeton, Yale Law, and her selection as a U.S. District Judge. Her attitude is much more supportive of the concept than Thomas was in his sometimes angry discussion of the issue in his book. Sotomayor places emphasis upon affirmative action as providing an opportunity to work very hard, unbelievably hard, and to demonstrate what your true capabilities are. She discusses this concept several times at different stages of her book, and I am very appreciative for helping to develop my thinking on this important issue.
Second, I found her story most fascinating because it is, in microcosm, the story of Puerto Rican challenges in Hispanic New York. I knew very little about this culture before reading the book.
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