Last month, in anticipation of Women’s History Month, I found myself researching what the theme for this year’s month was going to be. The theme of this year happens to be “Celebrating Women Who Tell Their Stories.” Personally, I think this theme is amazing given that our story is what defines us as a person, and there are countless women whose stories are so remarkable but are not as popular or recounted as often as they deserve to be. 

Given this, it felt right to me to choose a woman who has had a large impact on women’s history that I know not much about and do a deep dive into her story. I have always had an affinity and appreciation towards women who have remarkable careers in the legal field, and so being as though I knew little about her, I choose Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir to read. 

She opens her memoir with a major disclaimer which is that she will not be discussing or revealing much of anything when it comes to her own political opinions as she knows that the focus of the book is to tell the story of her journey to where she is today. I quickly found myself sucked in by her vivid storytelling and retelling of her childhood all the way through to when she was appointed to a judgeship for the first time. 

I have of course learned so much about her but there are a few things I think are most important and I would like to share them with anyone reading this today.

Sonya Sotomayor grew up in what she describes as a large conservative Hispanic family living paycheck to paycheck in the projects of New York. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother was seemingly a workaholic who never missed a day of work in order to make ends meet. Considering her unfortunate early life circumstances, it’s even more remarkable that she made it to where she is today. 

She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at a young age and was told that not only would she have to give herself daily shots of insulin and self-monitor her sugar levels without any of the technology we now have today, but she would most likely die early because at the time there was little treatment for the disease. Sonia recounts how she used this diagnosis to remind herself that every day is an opportunity to live in the now and it’s better to do things today than wait until tomorrow. She later accredits that same mentality as how she got to where she is today.

Her father passed away at a young age as a result of his drinking and while she was only nine years old, she observed one very interesting thing after her father's death… female family members (her grandmother, aunts, cousins, etc.) who were not close to her father or particularly fond of him when he was alive were absolutely sick to themselves once finding out about his passing. She later understands that it’s because they all felt responsible for his death as they did not stop him from drinking. She recounts, “That was how their minds worked. If a man did something wrong there was a woman to blame. But I knew that was nonsense. There was no saving Papi from himself.”

One of her first large achievements is getting into Princeton for her undergraduate degree. She recounts stories of herself and her family members being treated differently after others around them learned that Sonia was attending an Ivy League school. Oftentimes she felt a large amount of imposter syndrome and pressure, largely as a result of being a part of the first generation of affirmative action students. She felt as though classmates were waiting for her and other affirmative action kids to prove them right about not being smart enough or good enough to get into the school on their own merit. Despite all this, she graduated summa cum laude, received a prestigious award from the school, and went on to Yale for law school after graduation. 

An overarching theme of the book is the power of education and the doors it can open for someone in their life and in their perspective. She tells the reader that when she was young, all she had to reach for were old Reader’s Digests that were around her house. Despite this, her hunger for more knowledge was strong and she wanted to learn as much as she could and read anything she could get her hands on. When she was in college she read Oscar Lewis’s book La Vida and claims that it gave her a new perspective on her own experience growing up as a Puerto Rican New Yorker.

Lastly, I wanted to share some quotes from the book that stuck with me and I found very insightful.

• “A respectful dialogue with one’s opponent almost invariably goes further than a harangue outside his or her window. If you want to change someone’s mind, you must understand what need shapes his or her opinion. To prevail, you must first listen to others.”

• “I felt myself more of a mediator than a crusader, my strengths were reasoning, crafting compromises finding the good and good faith on both sides of an argument and using that to build a bridge.” 

• “Always my first question was, what’s the goal, and then who must be persuaded if it is to be accomplished?”

• “As difficult an environment as the DA's Office could be, I saw no overarching conspiracy against women. The unequal treatment was usually more a matter of old habits dying hard.”

• “There are things you may know in your heart for a long while without admiring them to conscious awareness. Until, unexpectedly, something triggers an inescapable realization.” 

• “The idea of my becoming a Supreme Court Justice — which, indeed, as a goal would inevitably elude the vast majority of aspirants — never occurred to me except as the remotest of fantasies. But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.”

I would highly recommend this read to anyone else looking to dive a little deeper into an uplifting woman’s story this Women’s History Month. I found it an inspiring story of a woman who worked hard and sacrificed much to accomplish great things. I firmly believe that anyone can take something from this book. 

Thanks for reading today.

Delaney Ward 

WPLN 2023 Fellow