1、In 1959, I wrote my autobiography for an assignment in Mrs. Kings sixth grade. In twenty-nine pages, most half-filled with earnest scrawl, I described my parents, brothers, pets, house, hobbies, school, sports and plans for the future. Forty-two years later, I began writing another memoir, this one
2、about the eight years I spent in the White House living history with Bill Clinton. I quickly realized that I couldnt explain my life as First Lady without going back to the beginninghow I became the woman I was that first day I walked into the White House on January 20, 1993, to take on a new role a
3、nd experiences that would test and transform me in unexpected ways. Although Ive had to be selective, I hope that Ive conveyed the push and pull of events and relationships that affected me and continue to shape and enrich my world today. Since leaving the White House, representing New York in Unite
4、d Senator has been a humbling and daunting responsibility, and one I hope to write about more fully at a later time. The horrific events of Sep.11th 2001 made that clear by bringing home to New Yorkers and Americans. The role we must all play to protect and strengthen the Democratic ideals that have
5、 inspired and guided our nation for more than 200 years. These are the same idea 了 s that as far back as I can remember or nurtured in me growing up. A political life Ive often said is a continuing education in human nature including ones own. My 8 years in the White House tested my faith and politi
6、cal believes, my marriage and our nations constitution and system of government. I became a lightning rod for political and ideological battles waged over Americas future and a magnet for feelings, good and bad, about womens choices and roles. This is the story of how I experienced those 8 years as
7、First Lady and as the wife of the president and how I made the decision to run for the United States Senator from New York and develop my political voice. Some may ask how I could give an accurate account of events, people and places that are so recent and of which I am still a part. I have done my
8、best to convey my observations, thoughts and feelings as I experienced them. This is not meant to be a comprehensive history, but a personal memoir that offers an inside look at an extraordinary time in my life and in the life of America. NoPageI wasnt born a first lady or a senator. I wasnt born a
9、Democrat. I wasnt born a lawyer or an advocate for womens rights and human rights. I wasnt born a wife or mother. I was born an American in the middle of the twentieth century, a fortunate time and place. I was free to make choices unavailable to past generations of women in my own country and incon
10、ceivable to many women in the world today. I came of age on the crest of tumultuous social change and took part in the political battles fought over the meaning of America and its role in the world. My mother and my grandmothers could never have lived my life; my father and my grandfathers couldnt h
11、ave imagined it. But they bestowed on me the promise of America, which made my life and my choices possible. My story began in the years following World War II, when men like my father who had served their country returned home to settle down, make a living and raise a family. It was the beginning o
12、f the Baby Boom, an optimistic time. The United States had saved the world from fascism, and now our nation was working to unite former adversaries in the aftermath of war, reaching out to allies and to former enemies, securing the peace and helping to rebuild a devastated Europe and Japan. Although
13、 the Cold War was beginning with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, my parents and their generation felt secure and hopeful. American supremacy was the result not just of military might, but of our values and of the abundant opportunities available to people like my parents who worked hard and too
14、k responsibility. Middle-class America was flush with emerging prosperity and all that comes with it new houses, fine schools, neighborhood parks and safe communities. Yet our nation also had unfinished business in the post-war era, particularly regarding race. And it was the World War II generation
15、 and their children who woke up to the challenges of social injustice and in equality and to the ideal of Americas promise to all of its citizens. My parents were typical of a generation who believed in the endless possibilities of America and whose values were rooted in the experience of living thr
16、ough the Great Depression. They believed in hard work, not entitlement; self-reliance not self-indulgence. That is the world and the family I was born into on October 26, 1947. We were middle-class, Midwestern and very much a product of our place and time. My mother, Dorothy Howell Rodham, was a hom
17、emaker whose days revolved around me and my two younger brothers. My father, Hugh E. Rodham, owned a small business. The challenges of their lives made me appreciate the opportunities of my own life even more. Im still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionat
18、e and levelheaded woman. She was born in Chicago in 1919. In 1927, my mothers young parents Edwin John Howell Jr and Della Murray got a divorce. Della essentially had abandoned my mother when she was only three or four, living her alone with meal tickets to use to use at a restaurant. NoPage3Neither
19、 was willing to care for their children, so they sent their daughters alone on a 3-day train trip from Chicago to Alhambra in California to live with their paternal grandparents. My mothers grandfather, Edwin Sr., a former British sailor, left the girls to his wife, Emma, a severe woman who wore bla
20、ck Victorian dresses and resented and ignored my mother except when enforcing her rigid house rules. My mother found some relief from the oppressive conditions of Emmas house in the outdoors. She ran through the orange groves that stretched for miles in the San Gabriel Valley, losing herself in the
21、scent of fruit ripening in the sun. At night, she would escaped into her books. She left home during her first year in the high school to work as a mothers helper, caring for two young children in return for room, board and three dollars a week. For the first time, she lived in a household where the
22、 father and mother gave their children the love, attention and guidance she had never received. When she graduated from high school, my mother made plans to go to college in California. But her mother Della contacted herfor the first time in ten yearsand asked her to come live with her in Chicago. W
23、hen my mother arrived in Chicago, she found that Della wanted her only as a housekeeper. Once I asked my mother why she went back to Chicago, she told me, “Id hoped so hard that my mother would love me that I had to take the chance and find out.”My father was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the midd
24、le son of Hugh Rodham, Sr., and Hannah Jones. He got his looks from a line of black-haired Welsh coal miners on his mothers side. The Scranton of my fathers youth was a rough industrial city of brick factories, textile mills, coal mines, rail yards and wooden duplex houses. The Rodhams and Joneses w
25、ere hard workers and strict Methodists. My father was always in trouble for joyriding in a neighbors brand-new car or roller-skating up the aisle of the Court Street Methodist Church during an evening prayer service. After graduating from Penn State in 1935 and at the height of the Depression, he re
26、turned to Scranton with a degree in physical education. Without alerting his parents, he hopped a freight train to Chicago to look for work and found a job selling drapery fabrics around the Midwest. Dorothy Howell was applying for a job as a clerk typist at a textile company when she caught the eye
27、 of a traveling salesman, Hugh Rodham. She was attracted to his energy and self-assurance and gruff sense of humor. After a lengthy courtship, my parents were married in early 1942, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. They moved into a small apartment in the Lincoln Park section of Chica
28、go near Lake Michigan. My dad enlisted in a special Navy program and was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station, where he became a chief petty officer responsible for training thousands of young sailors before they were shipped out to sea. 4Each summer, as children, my brother and I spent most of
29、 August at the cottage Grandpa Rodham had built in 1921 about twenty miles northwest of Scranton in the Pocono Mountains overlooking Lake Winola. The rustic cabin had no heat except for the cast-iron cook stove in the kitchen, and no indoor bath or shower. To stay clean, we swam in the lake or stood
30、 below the back porch while someone poured a tub of water onto our heads. The big front porch was our favorite place to play and where our grandfather shared hands of cards with my brothers and me. He taught us pinochle, the greatest card game in the world, in his opinion. He read us stories and tol
31、d us the legend of the lake, which he claimed was named after an Indian princess, Winola, who drowned herself when her father would not let her marry a handsome warrior from a neighboring tribe. When I was as young as ten or eleven, I played pinochle with the menmy grandfather, my father, and assort
32、ed others, including such memorable characters as “Old Pete” and Hank, who were notorious sore losers. Pete lived at the end of a dirt road and showed up to play every day, invariably cursing and stomping off if he started losing. Hank came only when my father was there. He would totter up to the fr
33、ont porch with his cane and climb the steep stairs yelling, “Is that black-haired bastard home? I want to play cards.” Hed known my dad since he was born and had taught him to fish. He didnt like losing any better than Pete, occasionally upended the table after a particularly irksome defeat. After t
34、he war, my dad started a small drapery fabric business, Roderick Fabrics, in the Merchandise Mart in Chicagos Loop. He employed day laborers, as well as enlisting my mother, my brothers and me when we were old enough to help with the printing. We carefully poured the paint onto the edge of the silk
35、screen and pulled the squeegee across to print the pattern on the fabric underneath. Then we lifted up the screen and moved down the table, over and over again, creating beautiful patterns, some of which my father designed. My favorite was “Staircase to the Stars.”In 1950, when I was three years old
36、 and my brother Hugh was still an infant, my father had done well enough to move the family to suburban Park Ridge. The post-war population explosion was booming, and there were swarms of children everywhere. My mother once counted forty-seven kids living on our square block. My mother was a classic
37、 homemaker. When I think of her in those days, I see a woman in perpetual motion, making the beds, washing the dishes and putting dinner on the table precisely at six oclock. One summer, she helped me create a fantasy world in a large cardboard box. We used mirrors for lakes and twigs for trees, and
38、 I made up fairy-tale stories for my dolls to act out. Another summer, she encouraged my younger brother Tony to pursue his dream of digging a hole all the way to China. She started reading to him about China and every day he spent time digging his hole next to our house. Occasionally, he found a ch
39、opstick or fortune cookie my mother had hidden there. My brother Hugh was even more adventurous. As a toddler he pushed open the door to our sundeck and happily tunneled through three feet of snow until my mother rescued him. My mother loved her home and her family, but she felt limited by the narro
40、w choices of her life. She started taking college courses when we were older. She never graduated, but she amassed mountains of credits in subjects ranging from logic to child development. My mother was offended by the mistreatment of any human being, especially children. She understood from persona
41、l experience that many childrenthrough no fault of their ownwere disadvantaged and discriminated against from birth. As a child in California, she had watched Japanese Americans in her school endure blatant discrimination and daily taunts from the Anglo students.I grew up between the push and tug of
42、 my parents values, and my own political beliefs reflect both. My mother was basically a Democrat, although she kept it quiet in Republican Park Ridge. My dad was a rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican and highly opinionated to put it mildly. 5Like so many who grew up in the D
43、epression, his fear of poverty colored his life. He could not stand personal waste. If one of my brothers or I forgot to screw the cap back on the toothpaste tube, my father threw it out the bathroom window. We would have to go outside, even in the snow, to search for it in the evergreen bushes in f
44、ront of the house. That was his way of reminding us not to waste anything. To this day, I put uneaten olives back in the jar, wrap up the tiniest pieces of cheese and feel guilty when I throw anything away.But in our familys spirited, sometimes heated, discussions around the kitchen table, usually a
45、bout politics or sports, I learned that more than one opinion could live under the same roof.Sometimes I had talked about how the spread of communism was threatening our way of life. But the Cold War was an abstraction to me, and my immediate world seemed safe and stable.I grew up in a cautious, con
46、formist era in American history. I had enough adolescent vanity that I sometimes refused to wear the thick glasses I had needed since I was nine to correct my terrible eyesight. My friend starting in sixth grade, Betsy Johnson, led me around town like a Seeing Eye dog.I was considered a tomboy all t
47、hrough elementary school. My fifth-grade class had the schools most incorrigible boys, and when Mrs. Krause left the room, she would ask me or one of the other girls to “be in charge.” As soon as the door closed behind her, the boys would start acting up and causing trouble, mostly because they want
48、ed to aggravate the girls. I got a reputation for being able to stand up to them.My sixth-grade teacher, Elisabeth King, drilled us in grammar, but she also encouraged us to think and write creatively, and challenged us to try new forms of expression. It was an assignment from Mrs. King that led me
49、to write my first autobiography. I rediscovered it in a box of old papers after I left the White House, and reading it pulled me back to those tentative years on the brink of adolescence. I was still very much a child at that age, and mostly concerned with family, school and sports. But grade school was ending, and it was time to enter a more complicated world than the one I had known.6“What you dont learn from your mother, you learn from the world” is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya. By the fall of 1960, my world was expanding an
