In 1959, I wrote my autobiography for an assignment in Mrs. King’s 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 about the eight years I spent in the White House living history with Bill Clinton. I quickly realized that I couldn’t explain my life as First Lady without going back to the beginning—how 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 and experiences that would test and transform me in unexpected ways. Although I’ve had to be selective, I hope that I’ve 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 United 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 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 I've often said is a continuing education in human nature including one's own. My 8 years in the White House tested my faith and political believes, my marriage and our nation's constitution and system of government. I became a lightning rod for political and ideological battles waged over America’s future and a magnet for feelings, good and bad, about women’s choices and roles. This is the story of how I experienced those 8 years as 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 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.
I wasn’t born a first lady or a senator. I wasn’t born a Democrat. I wasn’t born a lawyer or an advocate for women’s rights and human rights. I wasn’t born a wife or mother. I was born an American in the middle of the twentieth century, a fortunate time and place. I was securing
free to make choices unavailable to past generations of women in my own country and inconceivable 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 couldn’t have 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 of 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 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 valu
es and of the abundant opportunities available to people like my parents who worked hard and took 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 and their children who woke up to the challenges of social injustice and in equality and to the ideal of America’s 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 through 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 homemaker 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. I’m still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and levelheaded woman. She was born in Chicago in 1919. In 1927, my mother’s 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.
Neither 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 mother's grandfather, Edwin Sr., a former British sailor, left the girls to his wife, Emma, a severe woman who wore black 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 Emma’s house in the outdoors. She ran through the orange groves that stretched for miles in the San Gabriel Valley, losing herself in the 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 mother's helper, caring for two young children in r
eturn for room, board and three dollars a week. For the first time, she lived in a household where the 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 her—for the first time in ten years—and asked her to come live with her in Chicago. When 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, “I’d hoped so hard that my mother would love me that I had to take the chance and find out.”

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