U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited Puerto Rico to present her new memoir on Tuesday, drawing hundreds of fans in her parents’ homeland. The visit by the first Latina Supreme Court justice was an unscheduled stop on her book tour. Here are excerpts with a link to the full article and video interview below:

Sotomayor greeted a large crowd of students and teachers Tuesday morning as she entered the Law School of the University of Puerto Rico, where she spoke about her memoir, “My Beloved World.” The book gives a personal account of her rise from an impoverished New York City tenement to becoming a federal judge in 1992. Before talking about her book, Sotomayor moved her chair to the edge of the stage to be closer to the audience, which applauded her gesture. During the two-hour discussion with Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos-Febres, Sotomayor said it was important that her readers get to know and understand Puerto Rico. “I wanted to introduce them to our culture,” she said. “That’s a theme I had to include in every page of the book.”

The self-described “Nuyorican,” or Puerto Rican from New York, later met with the general public at the Plaza Las Americas mall, where she signed copies of the book. As she strode onstage in a bright orange jacket, Sotomayor waved to the crowd below and smiled. “It’s important to be here, because this is the place of the people,” she said in Spanish as the crowd cheered and held cameras aloft to take pictures and videos.

[. . .] Before Sotomayor began signing books, she introduced her mother, Celina, to the crowd, prompting someone to yell, “Congratulations on producing such a success!” Celina Sotomayor smiled as her daughter also thanked her and her grandmother for their support.

Sonia Sotomayor’s mother, a nurse, is from San German, a rural town near the southwest coast. Her father, who died when she was 9, was from San Juan. Many of Sotomayor’s relatives, including Rodriguez, live around the island’s northwest coast.

Sotomayor previously visited Puerto Rico in May 2012 and in December 2009, shortly after being named justice. [. . .]

For full article (and interview video), see http://nbclatino.com/2013/04/03/sotomayor-draws-hundreds-in-puerto-rico-for-book-tour/