Papi / Juli Sotomayor Character Analysis

If my parents couldn’t pick up the syringe without panicking, an even darker prospect loomed: my grandmother wouldn’t be up to the job either. That would be the end of my weekly sleepovers at her apartment and my only escape from the gloom at home. It then dawned on me: if I needed to have these shots every day for the rest of my life, the only way I’d survive was to do it myself.

The heroes were admirable if flawed, as compelling as any comic book superhero to a kid who was hungry for escape, [...] these immortals seemed more realistic, more accessible, than the singular, all-forgiving, unchanging God of my Church. It was in that book of Dr. Fisher’s, too, that I learned that my own name is a version of Sophia, meaning wisdom. I glowed with that discovery. And I never did return the book.

Now suddenly lessons seemed easier. It certainly didn’t hurt that I had spent the entire summer vacation with my nose in a book, hiding from my mother’s gloom, but there was another reason too. It was around that time that my mother made an effort to speak some English at home.

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted. What if my father hadn’t died, if I hadn’t spent that sad summer reading, if my mother’s English had been no better than my aunts’? Would I have made it to Princeton?

If my parents couldn’t pick up the syringe without panicking, an even darker prospect loomed: my grandmother wouldn’t be up to the job either. That would be the end of my weekly sleepovers at her apartment and my only escape from the gloom at home. It then dawned on me: if I needed to have these shots every day for the rest of my life, the only way I’d survive was to do it myself.

The heroes were admirable if flawed, as compelling as any comic book superhero to a kid who was hungry for escape, [...] these immortals seemed more realistic, more accessible, than the singular, all-forgiving, unchanging God of my Church. It was in that book of Dr. Fisher’s, too, that I learned that my own name is a version of Sophia, meaning wisdom. I glowed with that discovery. And I never did return the book.

Now suddenly lessons seemed easier. It certainly didn’t hurt that I had spent the entire summer vacation with my nose in a book, hiding from my mother’s gloom, but there was another reason too. It was around that time that my mother made an effort to speak some English at home.

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted. What if my father hadn’t died, if I hadn’t spent that sad summer reading, if my mother’s English had been no better than my aunts’? Would I have made it to Princeton?