Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/ La juez que crecio en el Bronx

When Sonia’s mother wasn’t cooking or working, she
was studying. She wanted to become a nurse, so she could make better wages and help her children even more.
While Sonia slept, sometimes her mother stayed up until midnight, doing her homework. There was nothing she would not do to help Sonia or her brother.
Sonia loved the world her mother gave her. Her mother
and father were from Puerto Rico, and Sonia grew up
surrounded by the tastes and sounds of Puerto Rican culture. A favorite meal was Spanish rice and beans. And she loved the big family parties where merengue music filled the air. ¡Arriba!
On Saturday nights, Sonia’s family and friends would get together. While the grown-ups sat in one room playing dominoes, Sonia and her cousins played lotería a Latin-American bingo game. Sonia’s abuelita
would shout out the numbers while the grandkids marked their cards with chickpeas. Sonia’s family surrounded her like a warm blanket.
And she was also surrounded by books—schoolbooks, library books, a set of encyclopedias her mother had saved all her pennies and nickels and dimes to buy. And, when the schoolwork was done, there were her favorite books-the Nancy Drew mystery novels.
Nancy Drew was a girl detective who was always on the go, solving crimes-she was unstoppable. That’s who Sonia wanted to be.
But then something happened that made her change her mind. When she was only eight, her doctor sat her down and told her some bad news. She had a disease called diabetes. If you have diabetes, you have to take several shots of medicine a day for the rest of your life.
So maybe she wouldn’t be Nancy Drew, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be unstoppable. Her favorite TV show was Perry Mason, about a courtroom lawyer.
One episode ended with the image of a judge-the most
powerful person in the courtroom. A lightbulb went on above Sonia’s head and she knew: She would become a judge. Becoming a judge, though-that’s not easy! Sonia knew she’d have to get really good grades to become a judge. So while other kids may have been goofing off, Sonia was studying at her mother’s kitchen table-year after year after year after year.