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[applause] >> greetings. welcome. greetings. welcome. i am randall morton founder of the the progressive forum americas only civic speaker organization expressly dedicated to the progressive values and the largest speaker organization in texas. [applause] we are excited tonight to present supreme court justice sonia sotomayor who is launching her first book a memoir called "my beloved world." please turn off your cell phoner

video is not allowed. we are authorized to tree like a supreme court justice msn a proclamation hearing. [laughter] the beautiful flowers on stage or flowers that are from lovely puerto rico. [applause] are regular florists manage to find and variance, ginger and tropical foliage. and thank you c-span booktv for being here in houston texas. the wortham center welcomes you and our friends across the country joining us on televisiotelevisio n. thank you for joining us. [applause]

i am excited that mayor denise parker and -- are here with us tonight. [applause] denise parker is one of my heroes, one of my favorite people and a touristic mayor. please stand mayor and first lady cathy. [applause] you can see past presentations of the progressive forum on our web site, great minds such as jane goodall, richard leahy, bill moyers and supreme court justice john paul stevens. go to our web site at progressive form houston.org. that is progressive forum houston.org.

we are pleased to give a book to every attendee tonight. just show your ticket in the distribution table in the grand foyer. additional books are also on sale in the grand foyer by the bookshop. after justice sotomayor's presentation presentations you would join me for a q&a. i should say a 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 look. 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! young people young people connect with sonia sotomayor. in her book, i was especially impressed by the scene of sonia and her brother junior's kids doing their homework with her mother who was also doing hers. studying to become a registered nurse. to generation of encouraging each other. to me, justice sotomayor's american success story should replace the narrow paris show alger on getting rich in america through individual determination. yes her stories about individuals but it's 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 person. it's about success in an america as it really is. sonia sotomayor's is the 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 from 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 valedictorian of her high school class and she graduated from princeton university sue me, but

he 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 at 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 you sonia sotomayor. [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 busy.

and so i have been been able to calm, but it's a tribute to the warmth of the people i met them that has been confirmed in the few hours that i have been here already. that 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 and as you saw on television i was back and forth a lot. [laughter] and this is my first trip outside. i am delighted. this is my first trip to texas and i am here in houston. [applause] i wanted to visit more than one city and i'm going to austin but i got to replace that 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 make the promise on television so you can hold me to it ,-com,-com ma i will be back to visit other cities in texas. [applause] now randall where are you? i didn't see where you went. all zero kho they are right there. u part of the reason that i did, and it was randall and suzanne martin, the founders of the progressive forum, who put this visit together. they have extended everyone think courtesy to me. i even had -- for dinner tonight. [applause]

and i am surrounded by flowers some of which i describe in the book from my beloved, part of my beloved world puerto rico. so, i am here to talk to you about my book and about what my book is about. and when i started to write thii wanted to accomplish. when you write a memoir, and i have read many of them through my life, you sometimes, way asking a question, asking yourself the question. did i learn anything new about this public bersin? regrettably, often 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 where at the end of it, the reader can, way and say to themselves, i think i know her. and so what "my beloved world" intended in part 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 is in captured in one part of my book. it's probably my favorite passage. and so i read it to you because it summarizes one of the very

important reasons i wrote this book. it's on page 178 and it reads, when a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without positive living examples of what she may aspire to become, whether lawyer, scientists, artists or leader in any round, her goals remain abstract. such models in books or on the news however inspiring or are revered are ultimately too remote to be true. let alone influential. but a role model in the flash provides more than an inspiration. his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one might have, saying yes,

someone like me can do that. and so, it was my hope that every child and hopefully every adult who read this book at the end of the day, what i said during my confirmation -- not my confirmation but my nomination is yes, she is an ordinary person just like me. and if that ordinary person can do it, so can i. and that is what i try to do. [applause] in the stories of this book. to tell you my experiences and my feelings. as i perceived them, at the time, and you will find me talking in the child of the

little sonia, and then give you the reflection 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, the hope that every single person in this room who has experienced even one of the difficulties i have faced a life, and those difficulties are as diverse as growing up in poverty, having a chronic disease and it's surprising how many people suffer from a chronic disease, and lived 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. we all create a bravado about oh we are okay. we can do this. it's easy to say, it's hard to do. and so i talk about those things in as ordinary a way as i can and as candid and open it away as i could in order i hope to give people courage to talk about and to rethink their own

experiences. there was a second purpose for this book because you see, the books that i love are the books that i have read and make me think on different levels. that deliver more than one message, because there is a beauty i think in reading books and discovering new things. you will learn about how i use books after my fathers death to escape the unhappiness in my home. and they became a rocketship out of that unhappy place but a rocket ship that landed me on far universes of the world when i found science fiction, to understanding places that i thought i would never get to visit.

i now gratefully have the wherewithal to do it, but i found india and africa and places that i had heard about on television but never imagined going, and i learned about them through books. i hope that every child in this audience and any child who is here understands that television is wonderful, but words paint pictures 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 paints a 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? that also describes a piece of my life in a way that i think paints a picture for you without having a photograph of it. so i am reading from page 15 of my book. and it reads, she was going to cook for a party and she wanted me to come with her to buy some 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 from my parent 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 comfort. for me it was always do. i was determined to grow up to be just like her, raised with the same exuberant strength. not that we look 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 puffy nose and short curly locks otherwise we recognize in each other a twin spirit and enjoyed a bond beyond explanation. a deep emotional resonance that sometimes is telepathic. we were so much alike in fact that people called me little mercy which was a source of

great pride for me. no one among my cousins was close to me and also had a special connection. but even nelson never wanted to go on saturday mornings because of the smell. it wasn't just the kitchen -- the chickens have smelled. they had baby goats in pens and ducks and rabbits in cages stacked up against the long wall the cages were stacked so high that she would climb up a ladder on wheels to see into the top rows. the birds would be flocking and clucking 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 you. [applause] it's one of my favorite parts of the book. at the end of my confirmation process, everybody learned 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 your grandmother. she really was the most important pertinent -- person in my life. so i used this book in part to tell the story of my grandmother. and almost everyone and there are some unfortunate people who

don't don't get another grandmothers grandmother's other grandfathers but those who do know what a special kind of love it is. so every mother and grandmother and grandfather in this book i hope you will see a piece of yourself because you are special. that brings me to a critically important part of this book. and a motive for it. during the confirmation process there were so many questions. i'm going to tell you the following. i always upset my marshals when i do this. i'm going down into the audience i'm sorry i can't go up there. you are too far up there. i was here earlier this afternoon and i looked looked out there said oh this is lovely. it's intimate. whoa is this big. [laughter]

but i can't go to you and i i've won't go as far back as i want because many of you can still see, okay but i find that if i walk among you i proved my family rights. they used to call me hot pepper because i could never sit still. i still can't, okay? [laughter] so people are asking me about my father and where he came from and what his family was like and i really didn't have much to tell them. they were asking me about about my own mother and there were big parts of her story that i knew that there was a lot i didn't know and in fact some of the information that came out during the confirmation hearing proved to be wrong. in fact, i didn't know where my father was born.

i thought it was the town he had left from importer 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 surprised me to no end and pleased me was knowledge of the above 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, that priest greeted them and said to the person who is asking for me, i knew she would end up here. we were just waiting. and he reached behind him and

pulled out the book. with the birthers a thicket of my father. and so it was a very touching moment, a very very touching moment. a second thing happened during my confirmation hearing. 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 broker of that happened along time ago. [laughter] don't listen to me too much your parents are telling you right now. you are victoria right? 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, i get busy you

know. every week i talked to her, at least once a week and sometimes more but i try to do it spontaneously so she doesn't worry as much. i never like management lessons, okay? but i found myself calling her every moment during that stressful period because hearing her voice gave me comfort. , as much as we had gone through life together, that i really haven't spent that much time talking to her about her life and her feelings. we talked a lot about my family family -- my feelings but not

enough about hers. 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 tad? to understand the background, by the time i came around 15 years later my father had become so chinalco holick that my life with him was filled with unhappiness. one of the greatest gifts of writing this book was finding out about a father i never knew and the love story that i never knew about between he and my mom. so i literally chose just a piece of my book because of all of the chapters in this book.

the love -- the one that 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 of my dad's death that i came to a true 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 at the time. that sense was frozen in time when my father died. my theory of grief was hardly more sophisticated than lucy'sz; lucy's -- [inaudible] the change overhanging my father's alcoholism silence in a

conversation among the adults that might have caused me to question what i thought. as we grew, my brother and i would speak more openly to each other but he could add nothing to my analysis, although he was six when he died he has virtually no memories of my father for 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 resolved itself eventually. i had never before in all of these years asked that perceptive woman for her own version of events. i would be startled by what i

uncovered and even grateful for the happier version of my father and my mother than i ever knew. my parents relationship was richer and more complex than a child could imaginep and the stories that come to life for?; all the; more precious to me fr having been captured as my mother's memory is fading faster with age. sometimes the people closest to us are those that we know the least. where should i begin, sonia? began begin at the beginning, mom. and the rest of the chapter is is -- i hope you're reading it to find the joy that i did. [applause]

so i pass on the greatest lesson of this book to every person in this auditorium who has a living parent, grandparent aunt or%g'g uncle, anyone who was alive who has a memory of your family's history, do what it took me 55 sit down and talk to them. re-listen free listen to their stories with an open mind and learn about yourself through next i sunday table or when you are and you go -- [laughter]

it was very famous in the latino especially in the puerto rican one. it was the exclamation of here we go again. we all do it. how often have you heard the story and you think you know it. you think that you understand the reasons behind it, the wise. but you don't really stop to ask why. so i'm 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 have ever had, becoming a supreme court justice and i did it for personal

reasons. the personal reasons were because i wanted to hold on to sonia. my life is moving and has been moving at an incredible pace. what happens i think to all of us is we forget how we got here. we think that sometimes it happens and we forget to be grateful. and i didn't want that to happen. this book is my memory. this book is here so that day i get confused, my family and friends will pick up the book, hit me over the head with it and

tell me to remember. [laughter] but it is also a tribute to that moment that i took in a very hectic life. my spare vacation time in the summer. i haven't had a vacation in three years since i was nominated to the court. i have taken a week off here and there. i even went to the beach for 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. either talking into a dictaphone, writing or editing and i worked every day from that time early in the morning until 6:00 or six time for 30 at night, five days a week. and if you don't treat a task as a job, it doesn't get done.

but the benefits were that i learned about my family, 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 because i want to save time for questions. see we are still good. >> where still good? how much time do we have? >> five to seven minutes. >> we had a long talk before and i said to him, be strong. when i ask you the question tell me the truth. you have to tell the truth, okay? or i didn't do my job, you know? [laughter]

i have got some are walking to do. i didn't realize all those people were going to be up there and i don't want to surprise them about them seeing me too long but i want the people down here -- though you know one of the things i love in this job is is -- once one should get nominated to the supreme court, every i am the world is on you. i am 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 follow the issues that the court is looking at. and because of this, everything you do is under constant watch. i have to hold on sometimes when i'm walking down excess of my broken ankle. thank you. this is a little steep. and i then i write a book and i

showed you the inside of my heart and i sold and you know i think i've lost everything. so i hope it's been worthwhile, okay? [applause] i started by talking to you about how we all keep secrets and i started my book and i have been asked by many, why did you start with the chapter about the diagnosis of your juvenile diabetes? i know that many of us hide the sad things in our lives.fufu it wasn't easy to talk about an alcoholic father.fgf5fu

it wasn't easy to talk aboutf5 u terror i felt when my disease 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 peopls who are drug addicts and you learn in this book about a relative of mine who was my soulmate, my cousin. and it was nelson. we were inseparable as children. you will see pictures in this book that will show you, 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 after -- before. and i will read to you a passage. i read it to you because his sister sobbed me this past weekend at an event in new york and said to me, sonia, thank you very few people remember who nelson was, and now you have brought him back to life. and in this story, he might even teach kids some good. so i will review the chapter 26, a few paragraphs from it.

if i try to understand that my heart how it happened that two children so closely matched could meet such different faiths. i enter a subterranean world of nightmares. the sudden panic when nelson's hand slips from mine in the press of the crowd, the moment i get paid what he cannot. reason seems a better defense against the pain. let the understand in my logical sway what made the difference between two children who began almost the same inseparable and in our own eyes virtually identical, almost but not quite. he was smarter. he had the father i wished for. we shared a special blessing. why did i endure and even thrive

when he failed, consumed by the same dangers that surrounded me? some of it can be laid on the door of -- the culture that pushes boys out into the streets will protect in girls, but there is more. said had mentioned that day at the hospital, the one thing i had that you lacked, call it what you might, discipline, determination, perseverance, a force of will, even apart from his saying so, i knew that it had made all the difference in my lifen]. if only i could bottle it, i would share it with every kid in america. well, do you know what that's about? it's about being stubborn.

every time your parents tell you not to be stubborn, look at them and say the justice that it was okay. [applause] we are not dealt easy hands and it isn't easy even for people i have plenty of friends who have proven that to me in life, it's an old adage but a very of us a whole things and if you let them knock you down then life is of the people in the world who

u. of golf s. support in this that organize themselves to help me court, something i will be eternally grateful for because not being so proud and arrogant . it's one of the hardest things to do in the world, 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 and not letting the pain of failure -- and i described my failures in this book because i had my fair share of them. not to let that not a down, to

even if you don't reach the moon when you aim for it, you can land on an asteroid that goes by that you can't achieve anything. you can't succeed in life without trying. and so when the ferry and, this is a book about trying, sometimes failing but having arrived at a life, and i and the book with this, a life in which i can say i am truly, truly blessed. thank you for sharing this with me. [applause]

>> well done. [applause] >> well done. >> thank you. >> why don't you tell people where the questions came from? >> they came from on line and many of you e-mailed them. >> some of them belonged to people in the audience? >> absolutely. thank you. [laughter]

you have done me a lot of good today. you have denigrated pfizer, thank you. 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 tidal? >> in the poem, there is a line that talks about returning to my beloved world and my world is not part of rico alone, but puerto rico is an important place. and i thought it was so important to call this book "my beloved world" introducing the world to the things that i love despite descriptions of some very bad things and difficult times and some challenges. the book is about love, a love

of life, a love of people, a love of experiences 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 part of rico, it's a great place to visit. [laughter] by the way you know when september 11 came, all of us i think not just in new york that the entire world were riveted with the news and one of the journalist was interviewing a woman from the midwest who said to the reporter, you know i've been watching the events in new york and those people are just like us. [laughter] i'll bet some of you have said that about new yorkers.

[laughter] that moment made me realize many things. one, that and all the unhappiness of september 11, there was one sliver of sunshine and it was then the way that americans came together. and it didn't matter what background we have a rare weaver from, we stood together as a nation. that was a really important lesson, but it also has made me realize what i was writing this book that i wanted to people to see the slice of my life that was different than theirs. now i doubt that my experience as a puerto rican in new york is identical to the experience of mexicans in texas or identical to the experience of other immigrants with roots in

different parts of the united states and the world, but we share so many commonalities. we share so much more family don't and i thought in describing my beloved world, in the descriptor way that i try to accomplish, that people would appreciate those commonalities and that they would come away with feeling their own lives even though the details might be different. >> you are famous for a phrase that came up in your confirmation hearing. it's in some of your speeches. wise latina woman. now when i heard that i felt there was war to the story. [applause]

i thought there was more behind it. what can you share with us? >> there have been many misunderstandings about that phrase in the article i wrote and what people didn't appreciate is where i came from. and where i came from was being a person who sometimes felt looked down upon. people talk about latinos generally in terms like illegal aliens and i use that term. some are undocumented, but illegal alien sounds like we are all drug addict's, murderers. yes, it breaks a lot to be

undocumented, but there are different kinds of crimes. some are worse than others and white-collar crime is different that kind of negative images portrayed on latinos in the united states. i have always wanted to convey to latino 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 i didn't have to apologize to anybody for being that or for anything that -- [inaudible] [applause]

it was not intended when i used 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. so i think it's at phrase that offended some and i wish i would have used a better term than i chose to use but its message was born from a sense of pride in knowing that i come from the very a very rich background in a very rich culture, second to none, not superior to any but equal. so that is what --

[applause] that is what i hope will come out of that. >> moving from the bronx to princeton university from one world to another in a series of culture shocks. you 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 kinds of passages? >> what i have done and i described in my book and every juncture of my life, i have joined latino groups. i've advocated for -- of latinos and i have done it because it's given me a sense of comfort and security in my life.

we all gravitate to that which we grew up in because it's the familiar and the familiar is warm and security and confidence building but i'm very careful to give a more broader lesson in my book, to talk about the need not to insulate yourself within your community, but simply to use it as a springboard into the larger world. yeah, go back and know your culture, have your friends and feel their warmth, but then go out and explore. that is what they're therefore, to support you when you fall down and to pick you up and push it out again and let you try new things. i talk about building bridges and not building walls in my book and 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 princeton which was completely alien to me, to making friends who are not latino. it's too convenient not to reach out and make friends that are different than you. but convenience doesn't help you grow. you have to take the risk of meeting new people to learn new things. and importantly, taking the time to embrace who you are but at the same time embrace others. it's not that easy for a lot of us but i really want this 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 sought mentors all the way through. >> mentors are the most important thing. the first passage i wrote about my role model, it was an introduction to one of the most important mentors in my life and that was josé who is a judge, a federal judge in the u.s. district court of the second circuit in new york. he later became -- but josé was the first successful, really successful mentor that i had encountered and i was talking about how important he was to me because he was a role model of what i might the will to do.

i think intuitively the story about -- [inaudible] i had a fifth-grade teacher and i described him in the book, who gave out gold stars when you got good grades and i wanted some gold stars. [laughter] but i couldn't figure out how to do it. and so i knew there was one girl and i had 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 said, what are you studying? i learned in writing this book because i saw her in it and believe it or not i didn't remember that story. she reminded me about that story. [laughter] it was nice to be able to include them in the book, but she explained to me how to

underline the important facts in what she was reading and how to go back through them the next day so that's she could commit them to memory and she would go through the passage again we looking at those important points and she said that is how she went about remembering everything she had to remember. and answering questions. ..