Book Thoughts - My Beloved World: by Sonia Sotomayor

 

 I've always had a bit of a fascination with Sonia Sotomayor. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps because she's an intelligent woman above the political fray, perhaps because she embodies a sort of intellectual rags-to-riches ideal that I admire, or maybe it's just because she was my company one summer. I was hunkered down in my apartment writing grad school papers with CPSAN on for background noise and she was in the throes of Senate confirmation hearings. It was like a bonding experience - except she didn't know it - I guess it was a rather one-sided bonding. 

Anyway, I began her memoir on Sunday and finished it on Monday evening. I knew I would like her book immediately. I chuckled at the prologue. She warned her legal assistants that she would be taking some liberties with language. They were not to evaluate her book based on the standards for formal legal writing. I appreciate and resonate with that sentiment. My blog posts do not follow the structure or style of the AP essays I spend so much of my life grading. I get it. I get her. She's my kind of person.

 If you know anything about Sonia Sotomayor you know her story. She grew up in the Bronx projects, she went to Catholic school, got a scholarship to Princeton and later Yale Law (true, affirmative action probably didn't hurt) and yes, eventually was appointed to the Supreme Court. That is the metanarrative - the real story that resounded in my heart and mind lay in the smaller narratives, the little pieces of the puzzle that make her who she is today. There are things I admire about her and things I do not. But all in all, I learned a lot by reading her book. I was inspired. I walked away feeling as if there is one person in Washington that I can respect. 

I admired her battle with diabetes. When she first learned of the disease her parents began fighting over who would give her shots each day. Sonia had witnessed many an argument among her parents, but this was the first time they were arguing about HER. So she learned to give herself her own shots. She was young. Probably too young. But she was determined. 

The summer after her father died she found solace in the library. She haunted her local library, checking out books with no rhyme or reason. As a result, this girl who grew up in a Spanish speaking home began to really absorb and learn the English language. A language that she would later have to master in all its intricacy. That was the summer that she became a lifelong learner. 

She joined the forensics team in high school. It was through public speaking and debate that she found her passion. She learned lessons that would eventually get buried by all of her law school technicalities. Later, when she was able to unearth that passion, relight that fire and infuse her words with meaning and emotion, only then did she begin winning cases. The lessons she learned on her high school forensics team were some of the most valuable to her career. 

She figured out how to get her self to college - and not just any college - Princeton. The labyrinthine world of college admission was one that none in her family had traversed. She was the first. She did it by herself. If she got a leg up due to affirmative action, well I think it only makes up for the fact that she didn't have the advantage of expensive SAT prep course, or a mom or dad to proofread college essays and fill out loan applications for her. She was still determined. 

She is a judge by profession, but not by nature. She judges cases and laws, but she does not judge people. She believes that there is something to learn from every person you meet. I do a lot more judging than she does and I don't even wear a funny robe. 

Sonia Sotomayor is an intensely hard working woman. She is a strong, independent, determined, thinking female. I love that. I learned about the Puerto Rican culture and how strong the bonds of family remain. I learned more than I ever expected to know about criminal law and day-to-day life in the district court. Yet there is one area in which I do not admire Sotomayor. She could not master the art of building a strong marriage. And yet, I still learned from her. It is very hard to do both - and to do both well. It is difficult to put oneself on a path to such enormous success and maintain the closeness and intimacy needed to sustain a strong marriage. While I cannot admire her example in this area, I appreciate her wisdom about families and careers. She doesn't beat around the bush. She admits that no woman can have it all without sacrifice. Working moms do sacrifice - they do not "have it all" as most believe at the outset. They can never be ALL there in the way a non-mother can, they are always feeling the pull, always feeling the weight of a bigger responsibility awaiting them beyond the doors of the office. Yet they should not be belittled or judged for this choice. Sotomayor does not believe that they are bad mothers, but that they are indeed making a sacrifice. A stay-at-home mother can invest 100% in her children, but she sacrifices her career. A woman who chooses not to have a family can invest herself 100% in her career but sacrifice the joys of a family. We are humans. We cannot do it all, we cannot have it all. Even Sonia Sotomayor, who has a seat on the highest court in the land, who has oodles of friends, a huge supportive family, degrees from two Ivy league universities and a host of other accolades, does not have it all. 

At the end of the day I can admire her hard work, her intelligence, and her unique ability to analyze the law and think through situations rationally. In all of those things I aspire to be more like her. But I would not trade my life for hers. I realize that for me there are some things greater and more honorable than a seat on the Supreme Court. That is being a good wife, maintaining a strong marriage, and perhaps someday raising children to be intelligent, determined, and hard-working citizens.

Book Thoughts: Worst, Hard, Time by Timothy Egan

Last week a tornado swept across the Oklahoma prairie. It leveled a town, destroyed livelihoods and took children, parents, and pets. While this happened I was in the midst of reading another story about this same part of the country. It was the story of the Dust Bowl. It was a story that left me even more in awe of the hard-core men and women who settle in the Great Plains. It was a story that allowed me to look at the faces on CNN with a different kind of respect - the respect that one has for those who persevere during hardship, who pass the lessons of hard work and determination onto their children. It was a true story. What's scary about Egan's book is that it is a work of nonfiction.

The people that live in the Great Plains today are the children and grandchildren of the people who never gave up. Of course my respect and admiration for the "Greatest Generation" of the Great Plains is mitigated by the fact that they created, or at least aided and abetted, their own troubles. Timothy Egan's book starts in the latter half of the 19th century. He talks about the cowboys on the Plains and the gradual transition to farming which became more rapid as the First World War shot up crop prices. The Great Plains never has been (and never will be) good farming land. It was the land "where the buffalo roamed." The vast grasslands held the soil in place for millennia despite the wind and drought. But our government's policies pushed the buffalo and the Native Americans out in favor of homesteaders and railroad companies. It was the last area of the country where men and women could have a piece of ground to call their own, and after the Civil War many took advantage of this offering.

Timothy Egan artfully tells the story of the Dust Bowl through the eyes of several families. Their stories take us through the prosperity of the war years where every inch of the land was plowed up to feed the U.S. and all of Europe. It takes us through the 1920s where prices fell due to decreased demand, yet fields were still plowed up year after year to break even. Farmers did this with no thought of what they were doing to their tomorrow.

Tomorrow came with a crash and a storm - or rather, many storms. The Depression hit the country about the time the skies dried up and the soil began to blow. Interwoven between the pages of this book is the story of Hazel Lucas, a teacher who got married, had a baby, and despite all her efforts lost her child to dust pneumonia. There are the housewives who sweep their floors and chairs and tables only to have the wind instantly blow more earth through the covered windows. The inability to provide for their families breaks even the strongest of men. Most leave. Entire towns disappear and are left covered in dust, their former inhabitants eeking out a living elsewhere. Yet it is the ones who stay that I admire. The ones who weathered the storm they helped to create. These were the people that were tied to their land, their home. Their children and grandchildren live there today. They will survive. They are made of the right stuff.

Book Thoughts: Sold

This spring I took a nostalgic retreat back to my tattered Anne books. It was a happy place. Yet after finishing the sixth Anne book and finding myself wishing more and more each day that I lived in the quirky utopia of L.M. Montgomery's Prince Edward Island, I knew that it was time to move on. One cannot live in fictional utopia forever...

 I've always been a person of extremes, so it should be no surprise that I left P.E.I for Nepal. My next book took me to a poor mountain village at the foot of the Himalayas where a girl was about to be unwittingly sold into the sex trade. (I didn't really intend to make such a drastic leap out of innocence, it just happened to be the next book on my reading list that the library had readily available for download.)

 The book I downloaded was Patricia McCormick's Sold. It started rather slowly, depicting the imperfect, yet simple life of a young Nepali girl. The main character, Lakshmi, lives with her mother, her pet goat, and her stepfather who spends most of his time gambling away the family's money. She is about 12 years old when her stepfather tells her that she is going to become a maid in "the city." This is bittersweet news for Lakshmi. She knows that will indeed miss her home, but she's also excited to begin aiding her family and sending home money to help her mother live comfortably.

 As the book's title suggests Lakshmi never does become a maid in the city. She is one of the thousands of girls transported across the border into India where she is forced to work as a prostitute. Stripped of her innocence and everything she knows, Lakshmi must work night by night to pay off her "debt" to the brothel's owner. Her debt grows with each meal she eats, each dose of medicine she is given, each customer that turns her aside for another girl. Yet even here the the darkest of places she finds solace in camaraderie with her "sisters" in the brothel and their children who daytime hours. Even in this harrowing existence, the options of escaping seem more dangerous. The city outside the walls of the brothel seem dangerous and threatening. Rumors circulate about gangsters who are hired to hunt down escaped girls. The girls are also told to distrust white men who come with their business cards offering a safe-house, a way out. But is it one such business card that offers Lakshmi freedom. If she is courageous enough to accept the offer...

 There is light in this book. There is a glimmer of hope. Mind you, it's harder to see than in an Anne-book, but there is goodness in McCormick's world. The book alludes to salvation for the women caught in slavery. However, they cannot be forced to leave the brothel. Some even prefer it there. It is this fact, this light in a dark place that makes the book worthwhile. McCormick's story was fictional, but her research for the book was very real. She went to India and talked to girls who had lived Lakshmi's story. This book is important because two things are true: 1) women are sold into the sex trade every day, most often against their will and 2) there are non-profit agencies out there to help them escape. One such agency that is International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM works with women to not only free them from the sex trade, but to rehabilitate them and teach them practical skills to make a living. Yet IJM and others cannot do this work without funding. It is not often that a book influences me to evaluate my level of charitable giving, yet I realized upon closing this book that I was truly blessed to grow up in this country, go to college, marry a good man, and hold a job that provides a surplus. When so many women are using their bodies to pay off an ever-growing "debt" I must ask myself - how can I use my surplus to help settle their accounts?