希拉里有声自传.docx

1、希拉里有声自传希拉里有声自传Hillary Rodham Clinton1In 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 be

2、gan 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 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 Janu

3、ary 20, 1993, to take on a new role and 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

4、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 stren

5、gthen 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 Ive often said is a continuing education in human nature including ones own. My 8 years in the Whi

6、te House tested my faith and political 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

7、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

8、 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. 2I wasnt born a first lady

9、 or a senator. I wasnt born a 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 wom

10、en 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

11、 and my grandfathers couldnt 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

12、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 devasta

13、ted 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 values and of the abundant opportunities available to people like my p

14、arents 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 w

15、as 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 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 i

16、n the experience of living through the Great Depression. They believed in hard work, not entitlement; self-reliance not self-indulgence. 3That 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, D

17、orothy 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. Im still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely ea

18、rly life as such an affectionate 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

19、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 mothers grandfather, Edwin Sr., a former British sailor, left the girls to his wife, Emma, a se

20、vere 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 Emmas house in the outdoors. She ran through the orange groves that stretched for miles in the San Gabriel Valley,

21、 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 mothers helper, caring for two young children in return for room, board and three dollars a week. For the first time, she lived i

22、n 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 herfor the first time in ten yearsand asked her to come live

23、 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, “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,

24、 Pennsylvania, the middle 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. Th

25、e Rodhams and Joneses were 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 o

26、f the Depression, he returned 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

27、when she caught the eye 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 Lincol

28、n Park section of Chicago 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 sea4Each summer, as children, my brothe

29、r and I spent most of 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

30、 in the lake or stood 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 re

31、ad us stories and told 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,

32、my father, and assorted 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 woul

33、d totter up to the front 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 the war, m