Flashbacks

Reading Days just prior to Finals’ Week, May. Admittedly, I was in full nerd mode®, hectically studying for my exams at the Romance languages library. That was when an email that excited me for months arrived in my inbox. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was to visit Pomona College on the 22nd of October this year. Thrilled, I got up immediately to pick up my free copy from the Dean’s office.

Each year, Pomona College selects a “first-year book” that the incoming first-years will discuss with peers, faculty members and the community at large during Orientation Week. Although primarily designed to help new students who have just got to know some of their new classmates and professors to engage in “deeper” conversations, the first year book is also a community book that strives to connect the College community together through intellectual dialogues. First-years would get their copies from their home mailboxes, whilst current students, faculty and staff can pick up free copies on campus before summer officially starts.

Shortly after My Beloved World came out, Prof. Hollis-Brusky got a copy, “I was so struck by the tone and how personal it felt”. As a scholar of constitutional law and theory, American politics, and legal institutions, who co-founded the Southern California Law and Social Science Forum and is nicknamed the “politics equivalent of Beyonce” by students who try to express her flawlessness as a professor, she loves the law and has spent most of her adult life studying it. Yet, Prof. Hollis-Brusky recognises that it is still sometimes a struggle for her to get through some of the other Supreme Court Justices’ books. Justice Sotomayor’s autobiography, on the other hand, is what she considers “a page turner”. As part of her preparation for her conversation with the Justice, Prof. Hollis-Brusky reread the book with a few themes and questions in mind: questions that would be of interest to the students, particularly first-years. 

In addition, she also spent almost every spare moment she had watching “hours and hours of the Justice’s interviews on YouTube”. During this process, Prof. Hollis-Brusky timed Justice Sotomayor’s responses to find a pattern (where Justice Sotomayor, who apparently has an internal clock, usually uses either 3.5 minutes or 6 minutes to answer questions), and spent much time crafting the questions that she would ask the Justice during the public event, based on her observations of what typically is successful in soliciting more genuine and interesting responses from the Justice. “It was a big emotional investment”, commented Prof. Hollis-Brusky, “I was very mindful of the questions I was crafting since I will be representing our community — it is not just about me. I want her responses to be as interesting and inclusive as possible.” The more she watched Justice Sotomayor, the more comfortable she became.

Prof. Ochoa also devoted much time and energy in preparing for the master class that she was to lead, “thinking about it and even dreaming of the conversation”. Having taught courses in sociology and ethnical studies (Chicano/a Latino/a studies) for more than 20 years now, she has paid special attention to certain themes that would relate to what she teaches, as “we all read books with lenses shaped by our interests and academic knowledge; the things that emerged for me in My Beloved World were intimately related to the work that I do”. When reading Justice Sotomayor’s story and selecting questions from students, she watched for such ideas as notions of authenticity, the language of choice, how language is intimately tied to identity formation, counter-narratives, the multiple forms of resistance both at the individual and institutional levels, as well as the Justice’s desire to become a lawyer as a means of addressing structural disparities. 

Additionally, Prof. Ochoa also watched several interviews of the Justice to see which questions would be more effective in prompting her to talk a little beyond the book. From these interviews, she noticed how the Justice “is a wonderful storyteller”.

It is fascinating to note how different individuals take distinct approaches to reading and appreciating the same book. Personally, I am the kind of people who usually associate parts of the books they read with the location where they read them. Having devoured My Beloved World in just a few days in Beijing and Hong Kong at the start of the summer vacation, I remember the difficulty of putting it down: at the dining table and living room at home, the balcony outside, the hotel room during my brief travels in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Central Library, restaurants… It was irresistible. I stopped almost everything else that I was doing to be fully immersed in the book for days, often rereading certain sections and digesting each word I read. The remainder of the summer, I recalled discussing about the autobiography with my friends in person (while riding on the metro in both Tokyo and Beijing) and via Facebook messaging. Facebook, as a virtual space, had also become a forum for the incoming Class of 2019 to exchange their thoughts on the assigned book, even before most students met each other in person. 

As school recommenced, the various dining halls in Claremont, CA probably got used to hearing a multitude of discussion topics on Sonia Sotomayor’s candid reflections. Towards the end of Orientation, first-years met in small discussion groups, each led by a professor, to talk about the autobiography. Also during Orientation Week, Prof. Hollis-Brusky gave a lecture to the first-years on My Beloved World. Encouraged by Dean Feldblum and her colleagues, she bravely shared her own story that resembles that of Justice Sotomayor in several ways despite the difficulty of such undertaking.

Unlike many of her colleagues at the politics department, Prof. Hollis-Brusky grew up in an apolitical family of divorced parents and had very little engagement with politics as a child. Like Justice Sotomayor, she came from a very tumultuous home life, had an alcoholic parent and needed to seek haven from the storms at home in her friends and relatives’ homes, and was a first-generation college student. At UC Berkeley where she attended graduate school, in particular, Prof. Hollis-Brusky felt that she was entering into a conversation that virtually everyone else had been having for years. “When you have a different background, you would try to conform, and the last thing you want to do is to expose your vulnerability in front of others. Justice Sotomayor’s comments about her own fears surrounding the gaps in her knowledge and having to be a student for life, fearful that at any moment someone might discover her and call her out – I felt those fears, I lived those fears. In some ways, I still do.” 

Prof. Hollis-Brusky’s talk received fantastic response from the first-years, who grew even more engaged and ready to talk than they already were. Many students from similar backgrounds (who, without knowing Prof. Hollis-Brusky's story, might look at her and think they have nothing in common) sent her heart-warming emails and visited her during office hours to further converse on related topics. 

When Prof. Hollis-Brusky met the Justice in person, she thanked her for “opening up so bravely”, which gave her the courage, as a vehicle, to engage with this part of the community. Reflecting on her initial meeting with the Justice, Prof. Hollis-Brusky smiled, “I got my jitters out when we first met and had to take a few moments to get it out of my system before the public event”. She loved how comfortable the experience was, described the Justice as “thoughtful”, and found her “calming manner despite a commanding presence” very unique.

[To be continued]