My Beloved World is the story of Sotomayor’s journey from the projects to the Supreme Court. She states that her purpose in telling her story is to answer questions she has been asked about how she overcame adversity to reach the highest position available in her field.

Her earliest challenges are her diabetes diagnosis and her parents’ volatile marriage, which leaves her feeling she needs to take care of herself because she cannot depend on her parents. She resolves to teach herself how to give herself her insulin shot. The process has many steps (sterilizing the needle, waiting for it too cool, ensuring there are no bubbles in the syringe, and injecting it properly). She tackles each one methodically and masters the process, which teaches her patience and discipline. This methodical, step-by-step approach becomes her blueprint for tackling every subsequent challenge in her life. When she realizes she does not know how to study in fifth grade, she recruits a classmate to teach her the process. When she sees that her academic skills lag behind those of her classmates at Princeton, she analyzes her weak areas and devises a system for addressing them. When she loses her first case as an ADA, she breaks down what went wrong and corrects it.