Lovely One

“By 1939, both Horace and Euzera were dreaming of a less constrained existence than the one they were experiencing in rural Georgia. They had heard from neighbors and friends who had moved to South Florida that the city of Miami, though just as segregated as everywhere else in the Deep South, offered more opportunities to industrious Negroes, and had even invested in public housing that was helping to establish a Black middle class.”

By leaving Georgia and relocating to Miami, Jackson’s maternal grandparents undertook risk and hardship to acquire better opportunities for themselves and their children. By characterizing her grandparents as “industrious” dreamers like herself, Jackson portrays Ambition and Resilience as Keys to Achievement.

“My parents very intentionally instilled pride in our African heritage, and faith in the future, in me as well. When I was a toddler, they would sometimes dress me in mini-dashikis and kente fabrics and style my hair in Afro puffs.”

By embracing aspects of African culture and style, Jackson’s parents taught their daughter to take pride in her heritage even as others dismissed or underestimated her because of racism. These details highlight The Importance of Representation, as Jackson was raised with positive representations of Black identity and heritage. The sense of pride and confidence that came from this upbringing was a boon to Jackson as she navigated being a racial minority in her Miami school. This passage foreshadows how her upbringing prepared Jackson to expand the representation of Black women as a Supreme Court justice.

“As I got older, I would come to understand that my dad had been something of a unicorn in his family—the one that wasn’t like the rest. His mother and siblings tended to take each day as it came, doing what they could to make the best of whatever situation presented itself. My dad, on the other hand, had always felt an internal drive to bend life to his dreams.”

Jackson describes her father’s innate desire to push himself toward greater achievements, evidence of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement. She characterizes her father as an inherently ambitious and forward-thinking person who was highly motivated to change his circumstances. Ambition and resilience made his achievements possible and laid the foundation for her own.

“They knew that I was one of the few Black children in my gifted classes at school, and that some people might make assumptions about my abilities, based on subtle yet pervasive messaging in the wider society suggesting that Black people were of inferior intellect and culture. Rather than allow such stereotypes to undercut my budding self-conception, my parents sought to put me in circumstances in which I was required to speak up and demonstrate my intelligence.”

Jackson’s parents tried to undermine harmful stereotypes by consistently challenging Jackson’s abilities so that she could build her confidence. This quotation adds to Jackson’s characterization of her parents as ambitious, educated people who had a high standard for their daughter and prepared her for life by pushing her out of her comfort zone and placing her in situations where she would learn the empowerment that comes with Confronting Racism.

“Over time, I would grasp even deeper insights: for one thing, each type of chess piece had a distinctly different character and function, a role unique to it and yet indispensable to the whole. And while it always pained me to lose a single piece in the back-and-forth with my opponent, I also came to understand through playing chess that sacrifice was sometimes necessary to advance toward a greater goal.”

Jackson foreshadows the sacrifices that she would later make to succeed in her career by discussing the lessons she learned while playing chess as a child. By framing acceptance and sacrifice as a form of resilience, this passage expands on Jackson’s theme of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement.

“It was around this time that I developed my preferred way of dealing with race-related challenges over which I could exert no control. While I recognized that the way my white friends and I moved through the world was not the same at all, I refused to let that seep into my psyche and destroy my sense of self-worth. Of course, such equanimity was more difficult to achieve early on than it would be as I grew older.”

Jackson bolsters her theme of confronting racism by explaining how, even as a teen, she tried to develop a stoic disregard for other people’s disrespectful behavior. This discussion portrays Jackson as a mature and resilient teen who tried to safeguard her own self-worth as her family taught her to.

“I have no doubt that one of the greatest beneficiaries of Mrs. Berger’s belief in the positive difference that strong oratory skills could make in her students’ lives was me. Under her tutelage, I learned how to reason and how to write; how to lean in despite obstacles; how to work hard and strive for excellence, believing that anything was possible.”

Jackson fondly remembers her time in Mrs. Berger’s debate class, in which she learned the foundations of theatrical acting, speech writing, and debate. By humbly thanking her teacher for helping her develop as a student and a person, Jackson shares the credit for her success with her mentor. Mrs. Berger’s lessons in persevering through obstacles reinforced what Jackson had already learned from her parents about ambition and resilience as keys to success.

“Though I had been accepted and included in my various circles in high school, with my new cohort of Black friends I felt completely folded in and unquestionably known. Belatedly, I saw how I had always endeavored to upend the stereotypes of Black people held in the minds of so many. Now I sank into the freedom of walking into rooms as simply myself, Ketanji Onyika, my parents’ ‘Lovely One,’ with nothing to prove and only myself to make proud.”

Jackson’s reflections on her new university friendships reveal the pressure she felt in high school to be an ideal representative for the whole Black community. She contrasts this burden with the freedom she felt among her Black friends to simply express herself as an individual and be recognized as such. In explaining these complicated feelings, Jackson highlights the importance of representation.

“That symbol of hate hanging in a dorm room window had effectively put the entire Black community at Harvard on the defensive, spurring us to rally and protest at the cost of doing what was necessary to excel in our academic and extracurricular lives and to avail ourselves of the wealth of opportunities that the Harvard experience afforded.”

Jackson recalls her hurt and frustration when she and other Black students organized to try to remove a Confederate flag from a Harvard dorm room. By reflecting on the dilemma of whether to direct their energy to their activism or their studies, Jackson adds to her theme on confronting racism, arguing that one of racists’ biggest tactics is to distract people from their goals.

“The fact is, Patrick’s ancestors and mine existed at completely opposite poles of the American experience, which made our finding each other nothing short of a miracle—or, as Grandma Euzera might have expressed it—the purest evidence of God.”

Jackson discusses her and her husband’s different family backgrounds and the unlikeliness of their marriage, casting her enslaved ancestors’ experiences as an “opposite pole” to her husband’s “Boston Brahmin” lineage. In doing so, the author celebrates her “miracle” of a marriage and how she and her husband formed a lasting bond based on shared values in spite of their very different backgrounds.

“It was a vicious cycle for defendants, who from then on would be labeled criminal offenders, even if they were actually innocent of any crime, rendering their prospects for a positive future vanishingly slim. […] In my twenty-one years of life, I had never experienced anything as devastating, instructive, or empowering as working to bring justice to a community that had so little.”

Jackson explains how her work at the Neighborhood Defense Service gave her firsthand experience with the racial disparities of the US criminal justice system. This quotation positions Jackson as a middle-class outsider witnessing urban poverty for the first time. This background explains Jackson’s motivation in using the law as a tool to improve people’s lives, rather than to ensnare them in punitive practices.

“Now I was in an arena where professors actively attempted to make examples of their befuddled pupils and students aggressively challenged one another’s legal premises to prove their mettle. But I was nothing if not tenacious. The harder things got, the deeper I dug.”

The academic challenges of Harvard Law School highlight the importance of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement. By characterizing herself as “tenacious,” the author suggests that her resilience and determination to succeed helped her adjust to the new competitive rigors of Harvard Law.

“So much of what Judge Saris and I were dealing with was uncharted territory. And as we hunkered down in her chambers night after night, sorting through the facts and picking apart the threads, I was distilling and applying all I had learned in law school in the context of a real case with enormous consequences. I was also experiencing how the law can provide solutions that change people’s lives.”

Jackson recalls her first clerkship with Judge Saris as they dealt with a complicated case of a student suing her university. This quotation gives the reader a window into Jackson’s real-world training as a young lawyer and demonstrates how Jackson sees the law as a pragmatic tool to resolve conflict.

“To my mind, being selected for such a prestigious role by one of the nine actively serving Supreme Court justices, or any of the retired Supreme Court justices, was akin to being struck by lightning.”

Jackson shares her complete surprise at being asked to apply for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. This passage shows that her hard work had earned her the respect of her professors and former bosses, who enthusiastically supported her application. This significant development in Jackson’s career serves as a bridge into Part 2 of the book.

“What I can say about my time in Justice Breyer’s chambers is that it plumbed a depth of physical and mental fortitude that I didn’t know I possessed. And I had no choice but to do so; the nature of the job demanded it. A Supreme Court clerkship involves weathering a perfect storm of extremely challenging legal questions within a high-profile, high-stakes environment, with unusually significant consequences attached to the outcome of every case.”

Jackson reflects on the demanding nature of her Supreme Court clerkship, in which she worked overtime seven days a week for a year. By revealing more about the personal and professional challenges of her work, this passage adds to the theme of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement.

“‘Welcome home,’ he said as he handed the passport back to me. A flood of emotion welled in me, and my skin prickled with chills despite the thickly humid air inside the arrivals center. I am home, I thought, my eyes stinging as I smiled and nodded to the man.”

Jackson remembers her trip to Kenya in the late 1990s. The opportunity to visit her ancestors’ home continent was especially meaningful to her, and although she had never been to Kenya before, this knowledge meant that her time there felt like a homecoming. This passage adds to Jackson’s discussion of her identity as a Black American and adds depth and emotion to her reflections on her travels.

“Going above and beyond—that had always been my brand. It was why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘The Ladder of St. Augustine’ had so captivated me when I’d first encountered it back in AP literature class. I’d even tacked one stanza of that poem to my bulletin board in every office space I occupied: ‘The heights of great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.’”

Jackson reveals that juggling parenting with professional demands resulted in an identity crisis for her, as she could not commit herself fully to her work as she once had. This “brand” that she was so proud of cultivating had to change, as she had another priority: her children. By quoting this poem and reflecting on her work ethic, Jackson emphasizes the theme of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement.

“Congress passed the bipartisan Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to address such potential disparity, and thereby created an agency tasked with devising guidelines that would balance the sometimes competing principles of uniformity, on the one hand, and proportionality, on the other.”

Jackson’s work as a part of the US Sentencing Commission aimed to make sentencing of convicted criminals fairer and more uniform by providing judges with sentencing guidelines. This passage gives the reader the necessary context to understand the significance of Jackson’s work in confronting racism.

“In the early years of our marriage, I found myself having to unexpectedly solo-host dinners with out-of-town friends and sub in at the last possible moment for Talia’s preschool parent-service events. No date night or weekend outing could ever top a patient under anesthesia lying on the operating room table. So in addition to feeling deserted, I also felt guilty about being exasperated when such conflicts arose.”

Jackson’s husband’s demanding career meant that she had to live with his unpredictable work schedule. This passage humanizes both Jackson and her husband, showing the sacrifices that both made to excel in their professions. By sharing these vulnerable details about her marriage, Jackson acknowledges the costs of ambition and resilience as keys to achievement.

“In my heart, I knew that defense work was a much better fit for me personally. Just as lawyers in private practices often feel most fulfilled when working on their pro bono cases, public defenders likewise feel as though providing services to people who might otherwise become lost in the system is doing God’s work in the criminal justice context.”

Jackson shares her passion for public defense work. She found this work especially meaningful since public defenders represent people who otherwise could not afford legal help. By calling this type of service “God’s work,” Jackson emphasizes how strongly she feels that public defenders are a vital aspect of protecting people from wrongful prosecution and thereby protecting the Constitution itself.

“While it was uncomfortable to openly oppose Congress’s decision not to provide for retrospective application of the Fair Sentencing Act, I knew that I would not be able to live with myself if I merely voted my conscience but declined to speak up about the crack-powder travesty and the blatant unfairness of denying retroactivity.”

Jackson explains her position on the Fair Sentencing Act, which she believes should also be applied retroactively to people who were convicted of crack cocaine possession before this law was passed. Her opinion put her in the “uncomfortable” position of opposing Congress’s decision, and though she worried that speaking out would make her unpopular, she did so anyway. By sharing this anecdote, Jackson characterizes herself as someone driven by a strong sense of fairness.

“While some in my position might have viewed having a lifetime appointment to the federal bench as a hard-won opportunity to take one’s foot off the professional accelerator, I did the opposite: I became more invested than ever in proving my value, intellect, talent, and worth. I realized that I was once again operating from the exhausting and ingrained ‘double-consciousness’ that W.E.B. Du Bois had identified in The Souls of Black Folk.”

Jackson adds to her theme of the importance of representation by reflecting on how being hired to the position of federal judge motivated her to continue working as hard as she could to prove herself. By connecting this impulse to her experience as a Black American, Jackson suggests that she felt anxious to represent Black women in the best way possible to continue breaking glass ceilings for them in the top positions of the legal profession.

“In such a politically polarized environment, I did not relish having to appear before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, whose members would certainly scrutinize every opinion I had issued as a district judge.”

Jackson’s promotion to the US Court of Appeals brought her a step closer to being nominated as a Supreme Court justice, but she needed to first pass questioning by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. By mentioning the political context around the questioning, Jackson subtly acknowledges that the confirmation of judges is a highly political affair in the US and that conservative members of the committee would disapprove of her nomination. This passage is typical of Jackson’s approach to the political aspects of her work, as she acknowledges the political discord but does not make it a focus.