As published in The Guardian:
Wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20251004170238/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/oct/04/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court

In her memoir Lovely One – the title is a translation of her African name, Ketanji Onyika – she recalls as a teenager asking her grandmother: “Why do they think just because I’m Black I’m going to steal from them?”

Her grandmother replied: “Guard your spirit, Ketanji. To dwell on the unfairness of life is to be devoured by it.”

She has kept that advice close as she has risen up the judicial ladder.

“I rejected self-doubt and self-loathing,” she writes. “Instead I chose possibility. I chose purpose.”