January 2012: Who am I and how did I get here?

Like most of us, I take inventory of the year I have just had and the year I want to have next. I think about all the good things that happened in the previous twelve months along with all the tough times and all the screw-ups. Each time I do this, I get wistful about how far I have come and shudder at how far I have still to go.

I am a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. To be sure, I have not achieved the success or notoriety of fellow Boricuas such as Justice Sotomayor or J-Lo, but I come from great stock. Born when my mother was in medical school and looked after by the most loving of grandmothers, I was not your typical first generation love child. I was troubled and dramatic - brazen and chatty. My mother would only speak English and my grandmother only Spanish. We always had books and listened to Billie Holiday and went to museums and the opera and hyper-cerebral movies I never understood. I was smart and when my mother became a surgical attending at three New York hospitals, she enrolled me in the best and most affluent schools. Still, I was brown and being brown in those settings, no matter how witty and charming I tried to be, meant rejection. Now what?

Well, you motor through. You claw your way through boarding school among the sea of blonde ponytails and soon-to-be-frat-boys and you show up to college in Vermont where your Freshman Seminar professor is Julia Alvarez and you finally get to devour books about the Sambia and the Woman Warrior. In spite of this academic freedom, you live a tormented academic existence in the whitest, but arguably the most liberal state in the union where people want so much to understand you but can’t and so you are still compared to Charro and Vanessa Del Rio. Ay yay yay.

You graduate, and teach bilingual elementary school in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Washington D.C., you bartend and work at Crate & Barrel while desperately trying to “find yourself.” You marry your college sweetheart (who a dozen years later turns out to be Tiger Woods). Next stop – law school.

There waiting for me was a pre-enrollment program with a Spanish name designed for “high-risk” students. To wit, those of us (all but one of color) with sub par LSAT scores or “alternative” undergraduate experiences. Mierda. Nonetheless, I plugged along in a tiny cubicle in the basement of the library determined to prove the statisticians wrong. A low LSAT score was NOT an indicator of aptitude for the law. But alas, if the LSAT was not, then my first year grades and inability to make law review sure could have been. The Socratic, “hide-the-ball” pedagogy was not for me. I decide to drop out and tell my 1L advisor – a beloved old professor whose mission had been to ensure that the law school was representative of a state where over half its citizens are Latino. He would not accept my withdrawal. Because of him, because an old, white man encouraged me, I hung on by my fingernails and second year discovered evidence and trial practice, moot courts and mock trials. Finally, I was home.

Yet somehow I was still way behind on finding a job, which almost everyone around me seemed to have secretly achieved by the close of our second year. But I come from great stock remember? So by some stroke of sweet serendipity, upon graduation, I get hired by my mock trial coach who just happens to be the president of a very well-respected Albuquerque firm. Phew. Here the fun begins. Well, certainly some actual fun in fact, began. The strategic thinking, writing, depositions and trials, oh my! As an associate I relished the opportunity to put my legal education to the test and impress even myself with all that I had learned. Oh – and having a baby would be “no big deal” because with hard work, a commitment to my clients and loyalty to my firm, I would succeed and be accepted and be happy…blah blah blah.

Now, we all know that countless articles have been written about the woman litigator in the man’s litigation firm. Exquisite seminars have been put on about her. Websites, a la Ms.JD have been thoughtfully and dynamically launched to define and support her. But nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what I was about to confront in the quest for, and later the achievement of, the purportedly equalizing sanctuary of partnership. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.  Much, much more to come on that can of culebras ladies. For now suffice to confirm what we all know to be true: Indeed, things are better for us and I have no doubt come all this way on the coattails of some exceptionally ballsy chicas. But women, and particularly women of color, are still a threat and as such, we are still treated as the enemy, punto. 

Alright, so that is just a taste of who I am.  Now, how did I get here? Simply stated, I got here as Justice Sotomayor and J.Lo did - with the love, support and mentorship of very special people. 

In last week’s mail was the January 2012 Williams-Sonoma catalog. The headline was “Reboot Your Life” and came laden with swanky photographs of extravagant juicers and non-stick frittata pans no doubt designed to seduce the newly health-conscious resolutionaries. Not me. I plan to reboot my life a little differently. This time last year, I was dying to write and vent and share ideas and stories about my practice, my kid, my friends, family and love life. In the coming months I will get to do just that. “Networking for the Soul: An Ode to My Cosas. What is Latina Leadership? Avoiding the Latin Bitch Bubble. Do we read too much? Watch out for the Underdog! Why are you scared of us? This Plaintiff looks like me. Planning for the future.” These are just a few things I want to put out there over the next eleven months and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to do so. ¡Palante hermanas, palante!