appointment as the first hispanic and third woman to sit on the high court. this is about an hour 20. >> greetings. [applause]

who is launching her first book, emma mark called "my beloved world." please turn off your cell phones and video taping is not a no. if -- are led to kick you out like a supreme court justice at a senate hearing committee. [laughter] the beautiful flowers on stage or flowers -- puerto rico. [applause] puerto rico the roots of sonia sotomayor's family. and theorems ginger and chocolate gold foliage. and thank you c-span booktv. we here in houston texas at the wortham center welcome you and our friends across the -- for joining us.

[applause] i am excited that mayor denise parker and cathy hubbard are with us tonight. [applause] denise parker is one of my heroes and one of my favorite people and a terrific mayor. please stand mayor parker and first lady cathy hubbard. [applause] you can see past presentations on our web site such as jane goodall, bill moyers and supreme court justice john paul stevens. just go to our web site at

houston.org. that is progressive forum houston.org. we are pleased to give a book to every attendee tonight. just show your ticket at the distribution table in the grand foyer. additional books are also on sale in the grand foyer by blue willow bookshop. after justice sotomayor's presentation she will join me for a q&a. i should say that supreme court rules don't allow us to discuss court cases of the past, present or future but we will delve deeply into her fascinating story. justice sotomayor will sign books and greet fans in the grand foyer. i cried when i read "my beloved world," and i also laughed. it is a good book. i believe it will be more than a bestseller. it will become a classic american success story and

required reading in high schools and colleges. i am amazed at the e-mails we have been getting from houston students filled with exclamation points. young people connect with sonia sotomayor. in her book, i was especially impressed by the scene of sonia and her brother junior as kids doing their homework with their mother, who was also doing hers. studying to become a registered nurse. two generations encouraging each other. to me, justice sotomayor's american success story should replace the narrow horatio alger myth the getting rich in america through individual determination. yes sir story is about individual determination but it is also about community, family and negotiating cultural boundaries.

it's about overcoming poverty and chronic disease. it's about insecurity, self-discovery and the joys of growing as an authentic versant. it's about deep-sixed s. in n. america as it really is. sonia sotomayor is the first hispanic in third woman to serve on the u.s. supreme court. she was born in the bronx and raised in a public housing project. her parents moved to puerto rico to new york city during world war ii. her father became a factory worker and her mother joined the women's auxiliary corps. sonia sotomayor was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of seven and her father died when she was nine. she and her younger brother were raised by a single mother. her brother is now a doctor. sonia sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her high school

class. she graduated from princeton university summa cum laude receiving the highest price for an undergraduate while attending yale law school. she was editor of the "yale law journal". she could have become a highly paid lawyer, but she went right into public service, becoming an assistant district attorney serving the people of new york. she served in almost all levels of the judicial system including private legal practice as well as years on the federal bench. in 2009, president barack obama nominated and the u.s. senate confirmed sonia sotomayor as the 111th justice of the u.s. supreme court. i give few sonia sotomayor.o [applause]

[applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> after i got to washington in 2009, i met a whole bunch of texans from everywhere in this large state and i have been repeatedly invited to visit, and

you know when you get a new job you are a little bit -- so i haven't been able to come. but its attribute to the warmth of the people i met that have been confirmed in a few hours that i have been here already. this is the third city on my tour. i was first in washington, my new home. i went back to the home of my heart, new york, over the weekend as you saw on television i was back and forth a lot during the hearings. [laughter] this is my first trip outside. i am delighted this is my first trip to texas. and that i am here in houston. [applause] i wanted to visit more than one

city and i am going to austin but i can't visit every place i want to. i still have a day job and i only have a few days to visit cities and promote my book. but i made a promise on television so you can hold me to it. i will be back to visit other cities in texas. [applause] now, randall where are you? i didn't see where you went. oh, they are right there. part of the reason i could come and it was randall and suzanne martin, the founders of the progressive forum who put this visit together for me. they have extended every warmth and courtesy to me. i even had --

at dinner tonight. [applause] and i am surrounded by flowers some of which i describe in the book. part of my beloved world is puerto rico. randall and suzanne, thank you. so, i am here to talk to you about my book and about what my book is about. and when i started to write it, there was one thing i wanted to accomplish. when you write a memoir, and i have read many of them through my life, you sometimes come away asking your question -- asking yourself the question. did i learn anything new about this public person? regrettably, i have read books and memoirs or autobiographies and thought to myself, i really

didn't learn much that i didn't already know from the news. i didn't want to write that kind of book. i wanted to write something different. something flare at the end of it, the reader could, way and say to themselves, i think i know her. and so what might -- "my beloved world" intended to do was to let you into my heart and soul and in doing that, i hope to show you who i was but also to show you a little bit of you. and there was a purpose for doing that. and the purpose was captured in one part of my book. it's probably my favorite passage. and so i've i read it to you

because it summarizes one of the very important reasons that i wrote this book. it's on page 178, and it reads, when a young person even a gifted one, processed without living examples of what she may aspire to become, whether lawyer, scientist, artist or leader in any realm, her goals remain abstract. such models appear in books or on the news however and spiraling orbit beard are ultimately too remote to be true let alone influential. but a role model in the flesh provides more than an inspiration. his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one might have every reason to

doubt. yes, someone like me can do it. and so it was my hope that every child and frankly every adult who read this book at the end would say, what i said during my -- not my confirmation, my nomination speech, yes, she's an ordinary person just like me. and if that ordinary person can do it, so can i. and that is what i tried to do. [applause] i tried to do in the story of this book. to tell you my experiences and my feelings. as i perceive them, at the time,

and you will find me talking as a child of this little sonia, and then give you the reflections of the adult sonia. it wasn't so easy to do, to put myself back in time and to tell you what i was feeling. but i did it for a purpose, and that purpose was to tell you what i have learned from those experiences. and in the process, to have the hope that every single person in this room who has experienced even one of the difficulties i have faced in life, and those difficulties are as diverse as growing up in poverty, having a chronic disease and its

surprising how many people suffer from a chronic disease and live their lives never talking about it. to being a child raised by a single parent, to facing discrimination and whether it's about my ethnicity or my gender, or it's about my background, we each feel the sting of it in some way. to simply being afraid, which i think most people experience, and we all create a bravado about, we are okay. we can do this. and so i talk about those things in as ordinary a way as i can and can't it candidate and open a way as i could in order, i

hope, to give people courage to talk about and rethink their own experience. there was a second purpose to this book because you see, the books that i love are the books that i've read and make me think on different levels. that delivered more than one message, because there is a beauty i think in reading books and discovering new things, and you will learn about how i used books after my father's death to escape the unhappiness in my home. and they became a rocketship out of that unhappiness, but a rocketship that landed me on far universes of the world when i

found science fiction, to understanding places that i never thought i would get to be. i now gracefully have the wherewithal to do it but i found african places that i had heard about on television but never imagined no wing and i learned about them through books. i hope that every child in this audience and any child who hears me speaking understands that television is wonderful, the words give you a picture in a way that nothing else can. and i'm going to read one passage of my book that describes the scene in my childhood that will prove my point for everyone in this room. because i think that these

passages paint the picture of my grandmother, that you don't need to see in the photograph in the book although it's nice to have them, okay? plus, that also describes a piece of my life in a way that i think paints the picture for you without having a photograph of it. so i am reading from page 16 of my book. and it reads, she was going to cook for a party and she wanted me to cook with her -- come with her to buy the chicken. i was the only one who ever went with her. i loved her totally and without reservation and her apartment was a safe haven for my parents storms at home. since those years, i have come

to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect and confidence. for me it was her. i was determined to grow up to be just like earth, the same rave exuberant strength. not that we loved much alike. she had very dark eyes, darker than mine and a long face with a pointed nose framed by long straight hair. nothing like my nose and short curly muff but otherwise we recognized in each other a twin spirit and enjoyed a bond beyond explanation. a deep emotional resonance that sometimes seems telepathic. we were so much alike in fact that people called me little

mercedes which was a source of great pride for me. nelson who was among my cousin's closest to me in age and my inseparable co-conspirator in every adventure also had a special connection but even nelson never wanted to go on saturday morning, because of the smell. it wasn't just the chickens that smell. they had a because intense and pigeons and ducks and rabbits in cages stacked up against the longwall. the cages were stacked so high that she would climb up a ladder on -- to see into the top rows the birds would be all squawking and clocking and flapping and screaming. there were feathers in the air

sticking to the wet floor which was slippery when they hosted down and there were chickens with mean eyes watching.÷( it's one of my favorite parts of the book. [applause] so are you there with me? in now at the end of my confirmation process, everybody learns about my mother, and she is someone that is worthy of being learned about but one day she said to me sonia, no one has talked about her. she really was the most important person in my life. and so i used this book in part to tell the story of my grandmother. because almost everybody and

there are some unfortunate people who don't ever get to go to -- know that a mother or their grandfathers but those who do know what is special kind of love it is. so i hope you will see a piece of yourselves in this. they are special. that ranks me to a critically important part of this book. ring the confirmation process i was being asked so many questions. now i'm going to tell you the following. i always upset by marshals when i do this. i'm going down to the audience. i'm sorry i can't go out there. up there. you are too far out there. you know i was here earlier this afternoon and i looked at here and i said oh this is lovely. its intimate.

wow is this big. [laughter] but i can't go you and i won't go as far back as i want to because many of you can still see me, okay? i find that if i walk among you, i approve my family right that you support me. i could never sit still and i still can't, okay? people are asking me about my father and where he came from and what his family was like. i really didn't have much to tell them. they asked me a lot about my own mother and there were vague parts of her story that i knew, but there was a lot i couldn't answer. and in fact some of the information that came out during the confirmation hearing proves to be wrong.

in fact, i didn't know where my father was -- [inaudible] i thought it was from the town we had left from which was in puerto rico but it turns out that wasn't true. he was born in a town called -- hey. [laughter] and i will tell you one of the things that's it prized people and pleased me with a knowledge of that but when the people who are helping me do the research on my family in puerto rico, went to the local priest to look at our families birth records. the priest greeted them and said to the person who was before me, i knew she would end up here.

we were just waiting. and he reached behind him and pulled out the book with the birth certificate of my father. so it was a very touching moment, a very very touching moment. a second thing happened during my confirmation. every morning before i went to the white house, i would call my mother, just to hear her voice. i don't talk to my mother every day. i broke her that happened a long time ago. [laughter] [inaudible] one night i forgot to call her

after she had been used to me calling every day and she was frantic. and i told her oh no. i can do this because i get busy in no? i talk to her at least once a week and sometimes more but i tried to do it spontaneously so she doesn't worry as much. [laughter] i never liked management lessons, okay? but i found myself calling her every moment during that her voice gave me comfort. and i realized that as much as i knew her, as much as we had gone through life together, that i really haven't spent that lunchtime talking to her about her life and her feelings.

i talked a lot about my feelings. we are all self-absorbed, but not enough about her feelings. and one of the things that i started with was to ask her a question that i had never asked her before, and it was, were you ever in love with daddy? so understand the background, by the time they came around a few years later my father had become such an alcoholic that my life with him was filled with -- and one of the greatest gifts of writing this look was finding out about a father he never knew and the love story that i never knew about him and my mom. and so i'm going to read you just a piece of my book because

of all of the chapters in this book, the one i love the most is chapter 7. because it's the chapter of the story i learned from my mother by just talking to her. it wasn't until i began to write this book nearly 50 years after the events of that sad year, my dad's death, that they came to a mature understanding of my mother's grief. for most of my life the sense of my father and of my parents relationship was confined by the narrow aperture through which i watched them as a child. that senseless frozen in time when my father died. my theory of guilt induced grief was hardly more sophisticated

than -- at 5 cents a pop. the vague shame overhanging my fathers alcoholism to silence any conversation among adults that might have caused me to question what i saw. as we grew junior, who is my brother you will know, and i would speak more openly to each other but he could add nothing to my analysis. although he was six when papa died he has virtually no memories of my father or the time before his death. and so with the vocabulary of hindsight, i came to assume that the intensity of my mother's grief implied some form of clinical depression that was never treated but that somehow resolve itself eventually. i had never before in all of these years past that very

intelligent and perceptive woman for her own version of events. i would a startled by what i'm covered and even -- does this remove for me the happier version of my father and my mother than i ever knew. my parents relationship was morñ complex than a child could imagine and the story that come to life are all the more precious to me for having capturing my mother's memory that's fading faster with age. sometimes the people closest to us are those that we know the least. where should i begin, sonia? begin at the beginning, mom. and the rest of this chapter is about that. i hope you will read it 2. --

to find the joy i felt. [applause] so i pass on the greatest lesson of this book. to every person in this auditorium who has a living grandparent, aunt or uncle, anyone who was alive who has a memory of your family's history, do what it took me 55 years to get to. sit down and talk to them. re-listen to their stories with an open mind and learn about i know because i do.

sunday table or when you are at christmas and you 3]2] [inaudible]"y [laughter] it was very famous and the latino culture, particularly the puerto rican one. one. is that! it here we go again, okay? we all do. how often have you heard the story and you think you know if? you think that you understand the reasons behind it, the wide. you don't really stop to ask why. and so i am giving you a free lesson. don't do what i did. don't wait until they are not here any longer. do it whenever you have the chance. and i have to tell you, i took the time during the busiest part of my life that i had ever had

in becoming a supreme court justice, and i did it for a personal reason. the personal reason was because i wanted to hold on to sonia. i have been thrust on a world stage and my life is moving and has been moving at an incredible pace. and what happens i think to all of us is we forget how we got here. we think sometimes that it happens for week forget to be grateful. this book is my memory. this book is here so that day i

get -- my family and friends will pick up the book and hit me over the head with it or go. [laughter] and tell me to remember. but it is also a tribute to that moment that i took, the very hectic life that i create at times, also my fair vacation time in the summer. i've have had a vacation in three years since i was nominated to this court. i have taken a week off here and there. we went to the beach for week last a week last summer but every day of my last three summers, i treated this book like a job. i got up early in the morning and by 9:00 i was at my desk or my kitchen table. i was talking into a dictaphone writing or editing and i worked every day from that time early in the morning until 6:00 or 6:30 at night, five days a week.

if you don't treat a task is a job that doesn't get done, but the benefits were that i learned about my family, learned about -- learn about yours. take the time no matter how busy you are. make the time and talk to those you love. you will find out the most incredible things. i assure you. so randall, where are we on time? i want to give you time for questions. >> we are still good. >> we are still good? how much more do i have? i will go on to something else. i'm real good at that. we had a long talk before and i said to him, be strong. when i ask you the questions tell me the truth. you better tell me the truth,

okay? [laughter] or i didn't do my job, you know? i have got some more walking to do. i didn't realize all those people are going to be up here and i'd didn't want to surprise them seeing me too long but i wanted people down here to see me a little bit. one of the things i love in this job is once you get nominated to the supreme court, every i and the world is on you. i'm not exaggerating. people from around the world have come to the united states to tell me that they watched my nomination on tv. and people tell me from all over the world that they read our cases and follow what the court is looking at and because of this everything you do is under constant scrutiny. you know, i have to hold onto people sometimes when i'm walking down some places because

of my broken ankle so thank you. then i write a book and i show you the inside of my heart and my soul and you know i think i've lost everything. so i hope it's been worth while, okay? [applause] i started by talking to you about how we all keep things a secret and i started my book and i have been asked by many, why did you start this with the chapter about the diagnosis of your disease? of your juvenile diabetes? i start a saying to all of you that i know that many of us hide this set things in our lives.fgu

it wasn't easy to talk about an alcoholic father.j)fufu it wasn't easy to talk about the terror i felt when my diseasefuu was diagnosed. and it wasn't easy to talk to people about how it's an ever-present part of my life. but so is asthma for many people so our family members who are drug addicts, and you learn in this book about a relative of mine who was my soulmate. and it was nelson. we were inseparable as children. you will see pictures in this book that will show you that almost every picture as a child that i'm in, nelson is right next to me.

nelson died of aids before he was 30. and i was with him the night before he died and many of the weeks before. and i will read to you a passage. i read it to you because his sister saw me this past weekend at an event in new york in september 8, sonia, thank you. very few people remember who nelson was. and now you have wrought him back to life. and in this story he might even teach kids some good. so i will read your chapter 26,

a few paragraphs from it. if i try to understand in my heart how to children so closely matched could meet such different fates, i enter a subterranean world of nightmares the sudden panic when nelson's hand slipped their mind in the press of the --. reason seems a better defense against the pain. let me understand in my logical way what made the difference between two children who began almost inseparable and in our own eyes virtually identical, almost but not quite. he was smarter. he had the father i wish for though we shared our best special blessing.

why did i endure and even thrive when he failed, consumed by the same dangers that had surrounded me? some of it can be laid on the door of machismo the culture that pushes boys out into the street while protecting girls, but there is more. now saidñ[ had mentioned that dy at the hospital, the one thing i had that he lacked, call it what you like, discipline, determination, perseverance, the force of will. even apart from him saying so i knew that it had made all the difference inv] my life. if only i could bottle it i would share it with every kid iz america. well, do you know what that's

about? [laughter] tell you not to be stubborn, look at them and say the justice said it was a good thing. [laughter] life. none of us are. i have plenty of friends who it's an old adage. life throws each of us a whole lot of bad hands, and if you let them knock you down, then life is really unhappy. and for me, the thing besides

all of the people in the world who have supported me and i have talked to you about that support book, the communities, court, something i will be many of those communities were not being so proud and arrogant all. that is one of the hardest things to do in the world, to say i don't know. and i hope my book will encourage more people to do that more frequently. but in the end, it's not giving up. it's about trying and retrying and trying again. not letting the pain i describe my failures.

i had my fair share of them. not to let them knock you down and get up and try again. and to understand that even you for it -- that could be very but unless you try, you can't achieve anything. you can't succeed in life without trying. and to the very end, this is a book about trying and sometimes failing but having arrived at a life and the end the book with this, a life in which i can say i am truly, truly blessed.

thank you for sharing with me. [applause] >> done. [applause] >> why don't you scan the audience so i can have a drink of water? i don't think the public ought to see this. thank you. >> well done. >> thank you. why do you tell people where the questions came from? >> date came from you now on mine and -- on line and many e-mailed them.

>> so other places and people in the audience? >> yes, thank you. [laughter] >> you have done me a lot of good today. you have been a good adviser. thank you ,-com,-com ma and i'm stronger also. [laughter] the title of your book "my beloved world" is from a poem in your book called to puerto rico i returned. what were your reflections in choosing that title? >> in the poem, there is a line that talks about returning to my beloved world, and my world is not puerto rico alone but puerto rico is an important slice of it i thought that it was so fitting to call this book my beloved world by introducing the world to the things i loved. despite descriptions of some very sad things in difficult

times and some challenges. the book is about love. a love of life, a love of peopls that have strengthened me even in their challenges. and so the title just seemed right. and, do you know something? if you have ever visited puerto rico, it's a great place to go to. [laughter] by the way, you know when september 11 came, all of the safing not just in new york that and the entire world were riveted by the news. one of the journalists, and one from the midwest, said to the reporter you know i've been watching the events in new york and those people are just like us.

[laughter] out that some of you have said that about new yorkers. [laughter] that moment made me realize many things. one is that all the unhappiness of september 11, there was one sliver of sunshine. and it was in the way that americans came together. and it didn't matter what background we had her where we were from. we stood together as a nation. that was the really important lesson. but it also has made me realize when i was writing this book, that i wanted people to see the slice of my life that was different than theirs. i doubt my experience as a puerto rican in new york is identical to the experience of mexicans in texas or identical

to the experience of others from different parts of the united states over the world. but we share so many commonalities. we share so much more than our differences. i thought in describing my beloved world in the descriptive ways that i tried to accomplish a, that people would appreciate those commonalities. and that they would come away with feeling their own lives even though the details may be different. >> you are famous for phrase that came up in your confirmation hearing and it's in some of your speeches. wise latina woman. when i heard that i felt there was more to this story. [applause]

i thought there was more behind it. what can you share with us? >> there have been many misunderstandings about that phrase and my use of it. and with people didn't appreciate is where i came from. and where i came from was being a person who sometimes felt looked down upon by the larger community. people talk about latinos generally in terms like illegal aliens. i don't use that term. some are undocumented. but illegal aliens sounds like we are all drug attics. or murderers.

yes, it rakes the law to be undocumented, but there are different kinds of crimes. some are worse than others. and white-collar crime is different than the kind of negative images that people portray on latinos in the united states. and i have always wanted to convey to the tino kids that we should take enormous pride in our culture. that we could be what i am, a very very proud american with a latino heart and soul. and that i didn't have to apologize to anybody for being that offer anything that -- [applause]

it was not intended when i use the phrase to suggest superiority. it was intended to do something completely different, to convey a quality. because when you don't feel equal, somebody has to remind you some time that you are. and so i think it's a phrase that offended some and i wish i would have convey that in better terms that i did but i chose it. but its message was warm -- born from a sense of pride in knowing that i come from a very rich background, a very rich culture, second to none and not superior to any but equal.

[applause] so that is what i hoped would come out of this. [applause] that is what i hope will come out when people read this book. >> moving from the bronx to princeton university from one world to another in a series of culture shocks, he described it as a stranger in strange lands but he discovered ways of adapting to new cultural worlds. what is your advice to others negotiating the same thing? >> what i've done in a described in my book and every juncture of my life is i have faith in people from the latino community i have joined latino groups. i have abdicated for some of the -- and i have done it because it has given me a sense of comfort

and security in my life. we all gravitate to that which we grew up in because it's familiar. the familiar is warming and confidence building but i am very careful to give it anymore broader lesson in my book, to talk about the need not to insulate herself within your community but simply to use it as a springboard into the larger world. villa, go back and know your culture. tell your friends, feel their warmth but then go out and explore. that is what they are therefore. to support you if you fall down to the pick you up and push it out again and let you try new things. i talk about building bridges and not holding walls in my book

i talk in those terms because i don't believe in isolation. i believe that every community should try to go out into the world and embrace it all, whether it's going to a place like cranston which was completely alien to me, to make friends who are not familiar. it's too convenient not to reach out and make friends that are different from you. convenience doesn't help you grow. you have to take the risk of meeting new people to relearn things, and important things. taking the time to embrace who you are but at the same time embrace others. it's not that easy for a lot of people. but i really want that message to come through in the book. >> there was a theme in your

book and i think it started in high school when you weren't sure how to do it and you sought out the smartest kid in class and asked her how to study. and you have soft mentors all the way through. >> matters are the most important thing in one's life. the first passage i wrote about was an introduction to one of the most important mentors in my life and that was jose who is a judge, a federal judge of the u.s. district court of the second circuit in new york. he later became -- but jose was the first really successful latino that i had encountered when i was in law school. and i was talking about how important he was to me because he was a role model of what i

might be able to do and achieve. i think i intuitively understood and speaking about that friend was from grammar school. i had a fifth-grade teacher and i described this in the book who gave out gold stars when you got good grades and i wanted some gold stars. but i couldn't figure out how to do it. and so i knew there was one girl and i have been in school with her for four years. she always got all the gold stars and i wanted some. so i went to her and i just said, how do you study backs i learned in writing this book because i saw her again and believe it or not i didn't remember that story. she reminded me of that story. [laughter] it was nice to be able to put it

in the book in all but she explained to me how to study and how to underline the important facts and what she was reading, how to go back through the next day so you commit them to memory and for the exam she would go three looking at those important points. and she said, that is how she went about remembering everything she had to remember to answer questions on the quiz. up until then i read it once and that was it. and she taught me that memorizing things wasn't a photographic memory. you have to see it often until it actually sinks in. what a life lesson. i use it to this day. i tell law students, when you have to go into court stand in

front of the mirror and say your opening statement a dozen times. do the same thing and then pick a friend who is not a lawyer and practice before them so they can tell you what they don't understand. nothing i do i do without practice. and so it was a lesson from her that really led me to learn how to be a student. >> the supreme court, it is a mysterious and secretive world to most of us. how about sharing a typical day and what the court looks like? >> if i say it most of you won't want the job. [laughter]