Sonia Sotomayor and Nancy Drew: Solving The Mystery of the Book-Career Connection

Work Wednesday

Everyone agrees that last week's confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor were a snooze. In the absence of any real political drama or startling revelations about the nominee (despite the 583 Senatorial bloviations disguised as "questions"), we've all had to make do with almost nothing but Nancy Drew. Since President Obama introduced his nominee to the world by explaining his "understanding that Judge Sotomayor's interest in the law was sparked as a young girl by reading the Nancy Drew series," there's been a lot of talk about how Nancy Drew inspired Sotomayor to become a lawyer and judge. 

(And not just from the Nancy Drew Sleuths fan club, which greeted Sotomayor's nomination with a mixture of excitement and aplomb. Here's a sample post: "When you think about the fact that most women read Nancy Drew when they were kids over the last 79 years, that she has influenced us all in some way or another, isn't really surprising or shocking. She's just that popular and good!")

Newspapers, television, magazines, and blogs have been filled with stories about how Nancy Drew influenced the lives and career choices of not only Sotomayor but nearly every famous woman alive – including Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There have been feminist takes on politics, class, and gender in the series and the relationship between these issues and Sotomayor's judicial personality. And highly personal explorations of the meaning of Nancy.

Much as I, too, loved the Nancy Drew mysteries as a girl, I don’t think there’s anything I can say, write, or even think that would add to the Sonia-Nancy genre. But, the "connect-the-dots" approach posited by Sotomayor and others - between solving mysteries and untangling complex laws and messy facts - made me wonder whether there’s any link between the books I loved as a girl and the career I’ve pursued as an adult. (Here, I’m defining "girl" as someone between the ages of 7 and 13, recognizing that at 14, I was perhaps half as sophisticated today’s average 9-year-old tweener.)

In other words, did the books I read and loved as a girl lead me, like Sonia, to the law?"

To solve this mystery, I started where all good detectives start. I made a list and then another list and then another one. (I read a lot as a kid!) Finally, I came up with my top suspects - my five favorite girlhood books. (At least these are the top five of the moment - there are so so many more, not even counting those published after 1980 or so).  Here they are (along with the Nancy Drew mysteries, of course):

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg)

Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl (Anne Frank)

Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh)

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

The list yielded a few clues. None of these books were about real lawyers or judges or even amateur detectives like Nancy although a few, like Claudia (Mixed-Up Files) solved mysteries. But they all featured heroines who had a sense of adventure and curiosity about the world. (Even when the world was an inhumane narrow place or a weird fantastical creation.) Girls who loved to read and write and use their intuition and imagination. Characters who were independent and passionate and opinionated and and logical - all at the same time!

All of these qualities pointed to some connection between my younger reading self and my later lawyering self. A highly-idealized lawyer self.  (Most real life legal practice requires far different skills. Such as the ability to deal with tedious opponents and tiresome trifles.  Current job excepted, of course!) I was beginning to think that Nancy Drew and my other fictional friends made me do it!

I turned next to outside experts to confirm my hunch. I canvassed an entirely unrepresentative group of friends and relatives about their own literary-professional links. The evidence I gathered supported my initial conclusions.

My bookish (and exceptionally wonderful) sister-in-law reported that "all books" influenced her first career, librarian. (As a child, she created "pretend libraries," pasting library cards inside the books.) She came up with a long list of cherished reads that included Robert Louis Stevenson’s classics, Heidi, a "wonderful series of biographies from the library, especially about women like Clara Barton [N.B., one of my early heroines]," the Trixie Belden stories, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Catcher in the Rye . . ." and promised more.

Another wise friend (and many others) echoed the choice of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as pivotal. This woman, who was a psychiatric social worker with a specialty in alcoholism in families, wasn’t sure whether the book influenced her or not. But she said that she read it about four times and cried each on each read.  She also married a guy who went to high school in Brooklyn and now has two sons who live in Brooklyn. Seems conclusive to me!

Two writer friends credited their love of reading to their eventual careers as writers - and one fingered Harriet the Spy as the reason she carried around a notebook. Another friend said that her love of reading generally influenced her decision to become a teacher and share great books with her students.

My husband, the sole man among my advisors, came up with a detective of his own to rival Sotomayor’s Nancy Drew - Sherlock Holmes. He said that the Sherlock Holmes books made him want to be a "detective" - and that his career as an attorney had given him to opportunity to spend his days figuring things out.

Even those dear reader friends who didn’t think that their childhood literature led directly to their life’s work, said, nonetheless, that their girlhood books had greatly influenced their lives. As one of them put it, her early-in-life reading experiences had made her a "curious citizen of the world." (Thanks, Miriam!) And they all gave fabulous book recommendations - like Anne of Green Gables, the entire Judy Blume oeuvre, and many many more - that would still engage and inspire many girls today.  (At least, I hope so!)

Now that my almost six-year-old daughter has started to read - as voraciously as I did when I was a girl – I'm eager to read with her some of same wonderful books that influenced me and to find out what inspires and delights her. And curious to learn how these books affect her choices - life and career - in the long run. (Just not too soon, please!)

In the meantime, I think I've solved the mystery of the book-career connection - at least for myself. (Judge Sotomayor, of course, was never in doubt.)

Case closed!

Comments

[Katherine]

What a wonderful reminder of the books I loved as a child. And I can't wait to read with my little one -- as long as she outgrows Junie B. Jones shortly. (Please, tell me that happens on the 6th birthday?)

[Hautblossom]

This is a great piece, and as Katherine says, a wonderful reminder of the books I read and loved as a girl. Thank you for posting it! I still have many of my childhood books, but there are a lot of holes to fill. I'm making a list and taking it to Half Price Books!

One piddly little point: Johanna Spyri wrote "Heidi," not RLS. (Unless there's an RLS "Heidi" that I'm not remembering, in which case never mind!)

HB

[Stacy]

Thanks, Katherine and Haut Blossom, for your comments. Katherine, we've managed - after one unfortunate experience - to offload the few Junie B. Jones books we received to our local high school book sale. I definitely didn't love them. But we are doing the "junior" Nancy Drew books now and they're fun! Haut Blossom - I'm making a list with you - I still have my six volume hardcover set of all of the Little Women books but others got lost along the way. And, I'm pretty sure that my sister-in-law was referring to all of RLS's wonderful books and then to Heidi separately. All books that I look forward to re-reading with my daughter.