I’d always believed people can change; very few are carved in stone or beyond redemption. All my life I’ve looked around me and asked: What can I lea… - Sonia Sotomayor

I had never before in all these years asked that very intelligent and perceptive woman for her own version of events. I would be startled by what I uncovered and grateful even at this remove to meet a happier version of my father — and my mother — than I ever knew.

The challenges I have faced — among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother — are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.