After her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings, Anita Hill ceased to be a private citizen and became a public figure at the white-hot center of an intense national debate on how men and women relate to each other in the workplace. That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives--and on Anita Hill's life. Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event.

Only after reading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family's Oklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled her to withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings and for years afterward. Only after reading her detailed narrative of the Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding of how Washington--and the media--rush to judgment. And only after discovering the personal toll of this wrenching ordeal, and how Hill copes, do we gain new respect for this extraordinary woman.

Here is a vitally important work that allows us to understand why Anita Hill did what she did, and thereby brings resolution to one of the most controversial episodes in our nation's history.

My world has been forever changed by the events that culminated in the "Hill-Thomas hearing" six years ago. I am no longer an anonymous, private individual, and my name has become synonymous with sexual harassment. To many I represent the courage to come forward and disclose a painful truth--a courage which thousands of others have found for themselves since the hearings. To others I represent the debasement of the public forum, at best a pawn, at worst a perjurer.

But I am no longer content to leave the assessment to others, for they cannot know what I experienced--what I felt, saw, heard, and thought. Whatever others may say, I must address these questions for myself. I did not choose the issue of sexual harassment; it chose me. And, having been chosen, I have come to believe that it is up to me to try and give meaning to it all.

--Anita Hill

From the Trade Paperback edition.

More than seven years after her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings, Anita Hill reflects on the hearings and sheds new light on this event.

A graduate of Oklahoma State University and Yale Law School, Anita F. Hill served, until 1997, on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman, Oklahoma. She lectures widely on the subjects of civil rights and sexual harassment in the workplace. She is currently working on a book about sexual harassment.

From the Trade Paperback edition.