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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Beloved World, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Optimism, Determination, and Adversity
Family and Friendship
Education and Learning
Puerto Rican Identity and Culture
Morality, Justice, and Giving Back
Summary
Analysis
Sonia only feels sad and lonely when she’s not working, so her friends step up to distract her and help her feel better. Nancy Gray invites Sonia to sleep on her couch sometimes and acts as a counselor. She also takes Sonia shopping and tries to boost Sonia’s confidence. Sonia begins to realize that she doesn’t have her own sense of style, and she’d like to change that. By summer, Sonia knows she needs a break from Mami. Nancy suggests that Sonia join her in a group house on Fire Island. That house isn’t right for Sonia, but Nancy points Sonia to a quieter house and Sonia signs up sight unseen. On her first trip, she arrives late and gets lost. Her housemates are lovely though, and they play games and cook together. She’s still friends with everyone in that house.
Following her divorce, Sonia essentially embarks on a mission to make more friends than she’s ever had. Nancy emerges as one of Sonia’s biggest cheerleaders, while the Fire Island group follows Sonia throughout her life—a testament to Sonia’s ability to both make and nurture lasting friendships. She also recognizes that if she ever wants to have a good relationship with Mami, she needs to help their relationship by giving it some breathing room. This self-awareness is likely what enables Sonia to make such lasting friends.
Themes
Dating is hard, since Sonia still lives with Mami. Mami panics if Sonia is out late and yells at her to go to bed. Dawn suggests that Sonia rent the apartment next to hers in Carroll Gardens. It’s close to work and the community is close-knit. Sonia tells the landlord that she’d like Mami to see the apartment first, which immediately endears her to him. Marguerite lends Sonia the money for the deposit and teaches Sonia how to handle money. Having grown up living paycheck to paycheck, Sonia has never saved or taken on debt. With her own place, Sonia enjoys developing her sense of style.
Now that Sonia is on her own, her friends all step up to make this transition as easy and pleasant as possible for her. Marguerite’s contribution in particular gives Sonia a sense of dignity and purpose as she learns to manage her money and achieves real independence for the first time in her life. And with her newfound independence, Sonia can begin to figure out exactly who she is and who she wants to be in the future.
Themes
The best part of living in Carroll Gardens, though, is Sonia’s friendship with Dawn. Sonia spends most evenings at Dawn’s apartment, chatting about work and discovering that their backgrounds are very common. Sonia loves Dawn’s husband, Ken, and Dawn’s children become Sonia’s unofficial godchildren. Sonia tells the reader that she always turns her friends’ families into her own family. She remembers Abuelita’s tribe, but she also remembers how Abuelita favored blood. Mami, however, treated everyone as family, blood or not. Sonia tries to emulate Mami. She joins one friend for Passover, Mami and Dawn for Thanksgiving, and spends Christmas with Junior. She visits friends like Ken Moy whenever she’s in the area.
As always, what pulls Sonia through difficult times are her close friendships—especially as her friends begin to have children. Now that she’s an independent adult, Sonia can set about creating her own extended, chosen family exactly how she wants. She can take the good she learned from Abuelita and throw out the bad (the insistence on blood family over everyone else) and combine it with what she learned from Mami. Doing so means that Sonia never has to be alone, even as she lives alone.
Themes
Sonia says she loves children. She’s accumulated more godchildren than anyone else she knows—she’s godmother to Marguerite’s daughter, Alfred’s son, and some of those children’s children. Kiley, though, is different. Junior calls in the middle of the night to tell Sonia that he rushed his wife, Tracey, to the hospital. Sonia flies to Detroit immediately to be with them. Kiley is born at one pound, 11 ounces. Sonia feels close to Junior as she watches him try to keep it together; the prognosis isn’t good. Finally, after days, Tracey can hold Kiley. When Junior and Tracey move to Syracuse, Sonia takes every opportunity to spend time with Kiley.
Especially as Sonia accumulates godchildren and spends time with Kiley, she sees that she can be a meaningful presence in children’s lives without having kids of her own. She remembers from her own childhood how important her relationship with Abuelita was; Abuelita was the person who showed her unconditional love and support. Being able to pay that forward within her own friends and family is one way that Sonia can improve her world.
Themes
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Given how much Sonia loves children, people often ask when she’ll have children of her own. Because she’s diabetic, the risks are high, and Sonia still fears she won’t live to old age. She considers adoption, especially after Junior and Tracey adopt twins. Sonia sees the twins as proof that adoption is emotionally satisfying, but she decides to not become a mother. However, she didn’t make this choice because of her career. She thinks the idea of “having it all” is silly, as she believes that working parents consistently feel like they’re neglecting either their work or their children. Because of this, Sonia does whatever she can to make mothers feel comfortable in her chambers.
In discussing her own choice to not have children, Sonia touches on the idea of “having it all.” To her, even though she chose not to have kids, it’s still important to speak up for those women who do have children—as they often face a difficult choice between working and parenting. This is why, in her capacity as a boss, Sonia takes action to make her chambers a safe and comfortable place for mothers to work. This is a small, tangible way that she can begin to remedy the sexism that plagues the workplace.
Themes
During Sonia’s time at the DA’s Office, women are just beginning to enter the legal field en masse. Dawn observes that only defendants accused of rape are happy about a female defender, and women at the office aren’t promoted as quickly. Casual sexism runs rampant; Nancy once asks a judge to stop calling her “honey” in the courtroom, and he ignores her. Sonia is often mistaken for an assistant when she’s in charge. Sonia is silent in these situations; Nancy and Dawn react loudly. Sonia believes the unequal treatment has to do with old habits dying hard, though she allows that the environment is “inhospitably male.” Sonia believes that she couldn’t have been so successful at the DA’s office as a mother, though she sometimes wonders if she’ll regret her choice. Ultimately, she knows that people can create families in all sorts of ways, including through friendship.
Sonia, Dawn, and Nancy face unique challenges as female lawyers and as working women in general. However, Sonia insists that sexism is something that can people can learn and unlearn. Her framing of her choice not to have children—that it is, in part, responsible for her success, but it might be something she’ll regret—speaks to just how important family is to her. But though blood family is important, it’s more important that she keep herself safe and devote herself to her chosen family, which is just as supportive and meaningful.
Themes
