My Beloved World

by Sonia Sotomayor

  Of all the links, language remains strong, a code of the soul that unlocks for us the music and poetry, the history and literature of Spain and all of Latin America. But it is also a prison. Alfred talked about moving from Puerto Rico to the South Bronx in third grade. His experience was common: no help in the transition, no remedy for his deficiency but to be held back. After that, teachers just shrugged and passed him from one grade to the next, indifferent to whether he’d understood a word all year. The sharpest kids would eventually pick up the language on their own and come out only a few years behind. Still, Alfred said, “the white kids were always the most advanced. The black kids were behind them, and the Puerto Ricans were last.”

  My cousin Miriam was listening in on our recording session, nodding in recognition. At the time, she was studying for a degree in bilingual education at Hunter College, and today she is no less passionate about that calling with decades of teaching experience behind her. “I want to become the kind of teacher that I wish I’d had,” she told me. She’d had it rough in the public schools, where the teachers knew so little of Latino culture they didn’t realize that kids who looked down when scolded were doing so out of respect, as they’d been taught. Their gesture only invited a further scolding: “Look at me when I speak to you!”

  I felt my own shiver of recognition too, remembering my early misery as a C student at Blessed Sacrament, in terror of the black-bonneted nuns wielding rulers, a misery that didn’t abate until after Papi died and Mami made an effort to speak 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?

  Recently, those recordings I made have resurfaced. As I listen to them now, too often I hear my own voice. There I go again, inserting opinions and jumping on the faintest hint of racism in their comments. It was my campus conditioning: I found it unfathomable that people who’d themselves been subject to so much prejudice on the mainland still clung to ideas about color as a gauge of status, as the way to keep score of how many of your ancestors had come from Spain, how many from Africa. I also cringe to hear myself lecturing Ana and Chiqui about how women’s roles are culturally constructed and therefore changeable. “Read Margaret Mead!” I yell at them. “In certain tribes in Papua New Guinea, it’s completely reversed. What you consider male, the women do. And what women do here, the men do over there.”

  “That’s over there. It’s different over here,” Chiqui says with finality. She wasn’t taking guff from a college know-it-all. It’s embarrassing, sad, and amusing, all at the same time. My own biases were exposed every bit as much as those of my informants. In those moments when arguments flared on the tape, the distance I’d traveled at Princeton was revealed, but it could also be erased in a moment when someone pushed my buttons. I could be yanked for a time into one world or the other, but mostly now I would be living suspended between the two.

  FOR THE TOPIC of my senior thesis I chose Luis Muñoz Marín—the island’s first governor to be elected rather than appointed by a U.S. president—whose efforts at industrialization brought Puerto Rico into the modern world. I was inspired by his work in marshaling the jíbaros, politically marginalized peasants, into a force that could win elections. Some part of me needed to believe that our community could give birth to leaders. I needed a beacon. Of course I knew better than to let such emotion surface in the language and logic of my thesis; that’s not what historians do. But it kept me going through the long hours of work, and it counterbalanced the fact that Muñoz Marín’s story had no happy ending, as initial success generated other economic challenges. How could this have happened? It was hard to imagine a more fruitful area for study.

  ONE MORNING, a small headline in the local paper caught my eye. A Hispanic man who spoke no English had been on a flight that was diverted to Newark airport. No one there knew enough Spanish to explain to him where he was or what had happened, and in his frustration and confusion he made a scene. He was taken to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and held there for days before a Spanish-speaking staff member showed up and helped him reach his family. This, I fumed, is not acceptable.

  When I called the hospital and asked some questions, I found that there were a number of long-term patients who spoke no English and had only intermittent access to Spanish-speaking staff. I could imagine nothing crueler than the anguish of mental illness compounded by mundane confusion and being unable to communicate with one’s keepers.

  The Trenton Psychiatric Hospital was beyond any influence of Acción Puertorriqueña. There was no way we could pressure the administrators to hire more Hispanics as we had the university. So I resolved to take a different approach, organizing a volunteer program under which our members spent time at the hospital on a continuous rotation so that there was always someone who could interpret for the patients and intercede with the staff if necessary. We also ran bingo nights and sing-alongs, finding that some very uneasy minds were nonetheless able to dredge their memories for the comfort of old songs their parents had sung. And before heading home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we threw holiday parties for the patients, recruiting our mothers and aunts to prepare the traditional foods that were too complicated to attempt in dorm kitchens.

  The program in Trenton was my first real experience of direct community service, and I was surprised by how satisfying I found the work. Modest as the effort was, I could envision it working on a grand scale—service to millions. But the operations of major philanthropy being then beyond my imagination, government seemed the likely provider. And so it was I began to think that public service was where I was likely to find the greatest professional satisfaction.

  UNDER A BANNER reading “Feliz Navidad,” we had set out the stacking chairs for the patients, and on the folding tables we’d arranged a bounty of pasteles and arroz con gandules. This was not an audience you could expect to settle down and listen attentively, but when Dolores strummed the strings of her guitar, the harsh fluorescent light seemed somehow to soften. We mustered some Spanish carols, Nuyorican aguinaldos. But it was when she turned to old Mexican favorites that Dolores’s voice truly shone as she serenaded those broken souls on a silent winter night in New Jersey:

  Dicen que por las noches

  no más se le iba en puro llorar …*

  They say he survived the nights on tears alone, unable to eat … Dolores sings the Mexican ballad of a lover so bereft that after he dies, his soul, in the form of a dove, continues to visit the cottage of his beloved. Even my heart, as yet untouched by such passion, is captured, and I am transfixed as Dolores coos the song of the lonesome dove: cucurrucucú …

  In the audience, an elderly woman is staring into space, her face as devoid of expression as ever. She is always the unresponsive one, who has not spoken a single word since we’ve been coming to Trenton. Tonight, even she is tapping her foot gently as Dolores sings.

  * They say that all those nights

  All he could do was cry …

  (from “Cucurrucucú Paloma,” a popular Mexican song)

  Eighteen

  FELICE SHEA WAS SITTING at my desk, waiting for me to walk over to the commons with her for dinner. She was that very fair-skinned Irish type, blushing at the slightest discomfort, and I had gotten pretty good at reading her reactions. Seeing at this moment a virtual red tide, I asked her what was up.

  “I really hope you don’t think I was snooping, Sonia, but I couldn’t help noticing that letter in your wastebasket …”

  “It’s just junk mail from some club. They want you to pay for membership, and then they want more money for some trinket engraved with your name. What a scam!”

  Felice now looked more embarrassed than ever as she tried to explain that Phi Beta Kappa was totally legitimate. More than legitimate, in fact: an honor of such
prestige that she insisted I had to accept the membership even if she had to pay for it. Felice was not only exceptionally kind and generous; as the daughter of two college professors, she knew all the ins and outs of academia and had guided me through many such blind spots. After four years at Princeton, I thought I knew the terrain pretty well, but every once in a while, even as a senior, I’d hear about something that made me feel like a freshman. I wasn’t going to take Felice’s money, but I did take her advice.

  Something similar had happened not long before. I was asleep when the phone rang; the voice on the other end said it was Adele Simmons, dean of student affairs, calling to congratulate me on having won the Pyne Prize. You’d have thought it was Publishers Clearing House from the excitement in her voice describing this honor I’d never heard of, obviously not paying attention to it in The Daily Princetonian, but inferring it was important from her tone, I found the presence of mind to express how astonished and grateful I was. It wasn’t until after I hung up and dialed Felice’s number that I got a full briefing on the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize. It seemed I would have to give a speech at an alumni luncheon where the award was presented. Felice and I were already into a discussion of appropriate attire, and planning a shopping trip, when she let drop the most important detail: “It’s the highest award that a graduating senior can receive.”

  I had not shopped for clothes seriously since the day I acquired my going-to-Princeton raincoat, which was now eligible for retirement. My complete wardrobe fit in one laundry bag, easy to carry home on the bus. It consisted of three pairs of dungarees, one pair of period plaid pants, and an assortment of interchangeable tops. When my summer job demanded a more professional look, I managed to avoid the problem by wearing a hospital uniform. Felice and her mother took me to Macy’s and helped me pick out a gorgeous suit for fifty dollars. It was the most expensive outfit I’d ever worn, but to judge by how I felt wearing it, it was a good investment.

  The gymnasium was transformed by tables dressed in white linen, flatware, and flowers. The crowd was vast—alumni, professors, and deans, all abuzz with greetings and congratulations, their hands extended, smiling broadly, glasses raised. A part of me still felt uncertainty—or was it disbelief?—about all this fanfare and how to take it, but there was no denying that whatever it meant, it felt great. I had worked hard, and the work paid off. I had not disappointed.

  Among the recent graduates were those who, as women or as other minorities, had already altered that old image of a Princeton alumnus long cherished by some. There were friends who had graduated a year or two ahead of me, like Margarita Rosa, who came down from Harvard Law School for the occasion. Others were only names to me until that day. Nearly every living Hispanic who had ever graduated from Princeton showed up, overflowing with pride and camaraderie, for what amounted to a triumphant reunion. My family, of course, was there en masse, Mami sitting there with a dazed smile that burst into beams of happy recognition with each friend or acquaintance who came over to congratulate her. My own face was sore from all the grinning.

  The vault of the gymnasium and the blank scoreboard were a distant frame, filled with the upturned faces of many hundreds of strangers. This was the view as I took to the podium to give my speech, stricken with the usual bout of nerves. With the exception of our small cluster of “Third World” friends and family, the faces were uniformly white. It was a fitting reminder of what I was doing up there. The Pyne Prize, often shared by two students, recognizes excellent scholarship but also leadership that provides “effective support of the best interests of Princeton University.” My efforts on the Discipline Committee had been a significant factor in my award, but so had my work with Acción Puertorriqueña and the Third World Center, which Princeton recognized as a benefit not merely to the few dozen student members of those organizations but to the broader community as well. The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders. The greater purpose of these groups had not been self-exile or special pleading. It had been to foster a connection between the old Princeton and the new, a mutual acceptance without which the body as a whole could not thrive or evolve.

  This was the work not of one person but of a community: y Amigos. And in my speech I wanted to acknowledge that collaboration, as well as bow to those among the newest alumni, like Margarita Rosa, who, walking in shoes very much like my own, had cleared a path for me to follow in.

  “The people I represent are diverse in their opinions, cultures, and experiences. However, we are united by a common bond. We are attempting to exist distinctly within the rich Princeton tradition, without the tension of having our identities constantly challenged and without the frustrations of isolation. In different ways and in different styles, some loudly and others quietly, Princeton’s minorities have created a milieu in which I could act and see the efforts accepted. In this way, today’s award belongs to those with whom I have worked to make Princeton realize that it contains groups which are distinct and honorable in their own traditions.

  “However, Princeton’s acceptance of our existence and thoughts is only a first step. The challenge to both myself and Princeton is to go beyond a simple recognition. I hope today marks the beginning of a new era for all of us: a new era in which Princeton’s traditions can be further enriched by being broadened to accommodate and harmonize with the beat of those of us who march to different drummers.”

  Looking out at that crowd, I imagined those who had not yet arrived, minority students who, in years to come, would make this multitude of faces, the view from where I now stood, a little more various. If they could have heard me, I would have confided in them: As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.

  SPRING EASED into summer, exams and final papers were wrapped up, my thesis review completed. Graduation brought one last unfamiliar laurel when Peter Winn called me into his office to tell me that I would graduate summa cum laude. Once again, facing the pleasure with which this news was delivered, I didn’t have the heart to inquire what it meant; for now it was enough that I should act very glad and honored. When I’d finally looked up the translation of the Latin phrase, the irony of my needing to do so was not lost on me. It was perhaps then I made a measure of peace with my unease: the uncertainty I’d always felt at Princeton was something I’d never shake entirely. For all the As and honors that could be bestowed, there would still lurk such moments of estrangement to remind me that my being there was not typical but an exception.

  I marched out of Nassau Gate with my classmates in a final ritual of return to the real world, knowing that I was headed back to the Ivy League for law school at Yale in the fall. Meanwhile, a summer job doing research in the Office of Social Responsibility at the Equitable Life Assurance Society in Manhattan would provide my first glimpse inside corporate America. It was, to say the least, a letdown: I was shocked at how much time presumably productive people were capable of wasting. It was similar to what I’d observed the summer before, working in New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs, only stranger perhaps, considering it was a business with the aim of making money.

  Junior by then had graduated from Cardinal Spellman and completed the first year of a program at NYU that would lead to medical school. He hadn’t grown up with dreams of becoming a doctor. His ambition at that stage of life was only to do something different from whatever I was doing, to find his own path out from under my shadow. Though our constant bickering had mellowed by then, and mutual respect prevailed, each of us was too involved in his or her own life to pay much attention to the other’s. But in a bind we would always turn to each other first, and given the experience that we alone shared, not much would need to be said. Family was family.

  The big event for ours that summer was the wedding. That Kevin a
nd I would eventually marry had been a given ever since the day I introduced him to Abuelita. With hindsight I can see how unexamined that certainty was. I had long mapped out a hypothetical route to marriage at the age of twenty-eight, which had less to do with the reality of my relationship with Kevin than with a desire to avoid the mistakes of others. My aunts had married at fourteen or fifteen, my cousins at eighteen. I was going to do things in the right order and finish my education first. But with the prospect of my beginning law school at Yale, and Kevin’s own plans for grad school still up in the air, it seemed sensible that he should move to New Haven with me. In our world that couldn’t have happened without our getting married.

  My mother and I had radically different views of what the wedding would be like. My vision was frugal, modest, and practical. Hers was extravagant. Her own wedding had consisted of a visit to city hall and dinner at Abuelita’s. She had not walked down the aisle, and therefore I had to. We battled over every detail, and she wasn’t above playing dirty. If I crossed someone’s name off the list in an effort to trim the numbers, she’d find an opportunity for us to run into that person and mention, to my well-masked dismay, that the invitation was in the mail.