We need more younger senators and more women senator. Absolutely. The passages in this book are fantastic but hoping we can have conversation but what does like on a personal level. The senate as a very tradition and often hidebound institution. How awkward was that talking through i think he used the phrase without abreast on the senate floor. Well, as soon as i became pregnant, i get pregnant througe ivf as i was fine but assumes would are successful, we begin having the conversations because remember the senate was even then when democrats were in the minority we were pretty evenly divided. Even then with democrats in the minority we were pretty evenly divided. I knew we would need every single vote. Senate rule says i cannot take Maternity Leave i can introduce legislation or vote. I cannot even give birth in illinois i had to do in dc otherwise i would be stuck there. You cannot take a newborn baby on the airplane. From the beginning i knew we would have to work through a lot of issues including the senate rules. Theres no way for me to get on the floor to vote with my baby unless they change the rules. That was almost a ninemonth long process of negotiations with amy klobuchar. And orin hatch was the lead committee chairman. Host what does that experience tell you and show you how far washington has to go to be truly feminist with the ability to represent . Because as you point out others raise children. One thing i learned you can find allies in unexpected places. Once a senators knew i was having these conversations and negotiating. Orin hatch really didnt want to change the rules. What will the babies dress code going to be . As a mom are you seriously asking me if the baby would adhere to a Senate Dress Code . Must have a blazer and shoes. She wears a beanie. I will not take that off. She would be in for the pajamas. I could put shoes on that. I will put a blazer on her. I did that day. But i had members, republican members, marco rubio i hardly ever agree said tammy, i am with you. I will stick up for you. I wish i couldve brought my young kids to the floor. We need to do this. We need to change the rules. And roy blunt said tammy i will be the next chairman. I will change the rules. I remember when i was in the house how great it was when i can bring my children to the floor progressive as he became chairman, the same wiki change the rules for me. Host that is fascinating. And it brings me to another question as a hill person i consider that photograph of you entering the building to vote Iconic Holding her baby daughter. You have been in the public eye for so long. You address this but how did that feel different now not just a public figure. I am very jealous of guarding my daughters privacy. You will rarely see pictures to see their fullface. Sometimes you will see media has captured it. But i am most no ways on never post pictures with their face. They can decide whether or not they want to post pictures of themselves on social media. But it was important for me to do my job as a working mom. Are fighting for working moms everywhere so it was very symbolic for all of the moms who work outside of the home as well. To see me break down that barrier i could show even a senator has to fight to bring her kid onto the floor to do her job. Host talk about very common experiences that women dont talk about, you were very candid about ivf and how tough that was. That is something a lot of women are starting to share more and more to get rid of the unnecessary shame attached to it. You talked about it matter of fact and your initial experience with the doctor in a Catholic Hospital who did not give you your full options. You can walk through with that shows you trying to help press healthcare policy to be more inclusive with fertility options. I was a congresswoman at the time. That was a learning experience. Prior i was at the v. A. I also use them for the healthcare. At the time so had very limited services. Every v. A. Hospital has a civilian Teaching Hospital as a partner. The v. A. I go to happens to be a Catholic Institution which i didnt ever think about ever go to them for mammograms or routine care. But when they return on referred me to Maternity Services the doctor did not even examine me or take me into the clinic. She met me in the waiting room. Your 43 years old. You are too old. You have less than a 3 percent chance of getting pregnant. The best you can do is go home and enjoy your husband and sent me on my way. Not knowing anything about treatments i believed her. This is a doctor and hospital i have received excellent care. It never even occurred to me. Had no reason to believe i was to all that 43 to get pregnant. I had been trying for ten years. So my husband enjoyed that line about enjoy your husband but then two years later i was speaking at a women in leadership seminar when a woman who was there the question was asked, had you manager Work Life Balance i try but i regret i could never have children because then i struggled and cannot get pregnant now i am 44 or 45. A woman said you are not too old go to this doctor. At northwestern in chicago. He has knocked up every single woman over 40 in chicago. Go to him. I didnt believe her. Was very polite she continue to pester me every month. Finally i went i went in to see the doctor who said you work with me and go to the process. Theres no reason why you cannot get pregnant and he examined be one examine me. Eighteen months to the day i was pregnant. I dont want anybody else to be misled the way i was. I said i thought i couldnt get pregnant and i was too old. He said where did you go . Because thats a Catholic Institution as a Catholic Church they do not support ivf specifically because its fertilization of an egg outside of the human body. That happens a lot. So i included this in the book because i want other women and other families who try to start a family to know that they have options. And it is a struggle but it is worth it. Have two beautiful girls one at 46 and then another right after i turned 50. Host it is incredible. You go into this in great depth. I wonder how you contextualize the story we didnt even get to the rest. And with healthcare policy there are very few members who have your direct experience with these choices of working women that they make every day. Did you think about this as you are working or was that separate quick. Everything i have experienced a bring to work with me because i think it makes me a better Public Servant for my constituents. I also told my Staff Members as they go through their lives with experiences. What the point of working for United States senator if you cannot work on your Passion Projects . I have been working very hard on reproductive rights not just as a Progressive Democratic women take on peoples attention including my republican colleagues. If you support the persons of amendments of fertilized egg is a full person with rights you will make ivf out of reach for most people. My doctor said if this passes, tammy i could be convicted of manslaughter if i put fertilized eggs and you knowing that probably two of them will not take because they are human beings and has rights. Think about what you are doing when you pass legislation on reproductive access for women. I bring that to the table. I wrote about it and letters to my colleagues and a speak up all the time. Is not just about choice in terms of abortion but to want to have children and have techniques beyond my grasp because of these laws that havent seen consequences most people dont even think about. Host i covered this but you raised this issue and had a discussion during the confirmation process. Talking to more of your colleagues like the senators that were allies and access on the floor does it make them more open to talking about it . I think so. Time and again whether we talk about the post office and then to support the u. S. Postal service i get my medication through the mail. Its one thing for the mail to be the couple of days late but if it is three weeks late and is my medication for phantom pain people are suffering. I also think i bring to the table i introduced the mom act talking about the high Maternal Mortality rates among african of american women they need to support their not listen to in the childbirth process. And the diaper needs act talking on talk about people cannot afford diapers for their children in daycare not because itll have access to daycare but access to diapers if they are choosing between food and diapers if you drop off a child you have to include diapers then you cant that your child in daycare then you can go to work. So i think it makes a better legislator. And my colleagues have their own experience that they are helpful to them as well. Host s now going back to the earlier chapters in your life you discussed, i was struck reading the New York Times review because they had the thought that i had. There are certain parallels to dreams of my father. You get extremely personal. Your style of writing is very different from president obama. He could be a little ornate but i just like you get down to it. So what was that like . So discuss who your influences were because you are so candid what it was like growing up to have the vision of america and your life in america and you get really personal. Did you say this is the way senator duckworth would talk quick. I really enjoyed born of crime. The title was amazing. Very personal about being born biracial in south africa even his parents got together and had him. And my parents met each other and fell in love and had me my dad and home state of virginia could not have married my mother because it had not yet passed in virginia. And i learned so much about apartheid to the individual on the black side of the equation and the white side. I wanted to do the same thing for the experience of growing up biracial in asia. I wanted to teach the reader about what it was like to grow up in Southeast Asia post vietnam but also why i still believe america is worth it. America is worth fighting for. My sexual daughter abigail asked me the question. Mommy you dont have legs. She wants me to teach her to ride her bike. But i cant run alongside of her to push the bike. So she said why couldnt somebody elses mommy or daddy go to iraq and lose their legs . Why you . I wanted to show her america is worth it. Democracy is worth it. It began me growing up has an american in Southeast Asia. To understand what a privilege it was that i was an american. But i can leave the wartorn country when i wanted to because i had the passport and another children could not because they were abandoned by their fathers but i was not abandoned by mine. Host speaking of your father, his experience in the v. A. System, was the first chapter in a chapter such a combination of the personal and frankly the political to talk about how the system can fail so my dad did what a lot of veterans do which is they dont go to va to get the care they need and support they need because they think theyre okay and theyre saving the care for their bodies and my dad time and again line to the va. He had wounds from his military service and he would say i dont need anything, you take care of the other guys which is what you learn to do in the service, you look out for your buddies and our veterans would take that to the most extreme form and i write about this in the book where for example ouin italy when i was director of the state department of Veterans Affairs the federal va said there were thousand veterans in illinois but i knew there were 1. 2 million veterans because thats how many individual veterans apply for licenses from the secretary of the state so the va is undercounting 400,000 veterans in illinois which means that when the va goes to build a new hospital they look at all the states and the illinois has thousand veterans, it doesnt need additional water to hospitals were going to build so that means illinois doesnt get those hospitals and windows 400,000 veterans do need to go to va for help but help isnt there, its gone somewhere else i spent a lot of time telling veterans even if you dont plan to use it sign up so the va knows youre therethe best way you can take care of your buddies is not not enrolled , the best way you can take care of your body is enroll so that they know you are there and get counted but i run into this all the time. Theyre still in that mode of taking care of their bodies, sacrificing for the team instead of watching out for themselves and it ends up wearing the team when they dont go inand get the care they need. I should say i saw it as a system variable you say this in the book. Its a matter of the culture of taking care ofveterans needing to evolve. Is your book that telling your story can help that happen . All the stories in the book about me growing up in asia and rivera in america and being so lucky i was american or talking about being hungry, when i was in my teens and my dad had lost his job and was unemployed for over for five years, ive been telling me stories osto people because i know there are people that have lost a job in their 50s and theyre behind on their rent and are literally a day away from homelessness the way we were and are grateful for the food stamps or are scraping by whatever they can and are choosing between two i feed my kids or do i take medicine . All those things. I them all together in the book to show that youre not alone. Youre not alone and there are people like me who are in positions of power to understand and see you and are trying our best to solve the problems youre stfacing but despite all that, the safety nets are there for me. The safety nets were there. I did get the food stamps on it, i did go to a public school, i could graduate from college with relatively low debt, all that was available so that i could join the army and become a us senator one day and i want to make sure those units are there for other people. Another sort of question i have about your inspiration for this. The Current Situation with antiasian crime frankly when a really terrifying moment for a lot of Asian American civic islanders in this country land i know youre working on legislation that can help address this but im wondering when you are writing this book i imagine we may be worth yet and the virus pandemic but whether that entered into your mind in terms of talking about your experience to people who might suffer discrimination youre in america. Chapters about feeling of permanent other about actually being discriminated against when i was in asia because iwas half what. I was born for being half white and insulted and treated differently by my asian cousins because i was half white and didnt fit in with the Asian Community and i talk about being and other later on and that all happened before coronavirus. So i hope people take from that and understand this is a universal experience among Asian American pacific erislanders in the United States. We are the one group in this country that after some of our ancestors have gone through fighting for the north and the civil war had it taken away from them in the chinese exclusion. Veterans of the civil war had their citizenship they had earned taken away due to the chinese exclusion act h. We are the only population that our families put into internment camps in the middle of the war and fought for this country even as our family members were living behind barbed wire just because they were of companies dissent or looks like they would be of japanese descent. So i have had people come up to me while i was wearing the uniform of my asian with the American Flag on my shoulder and asked where are you really from . Duckworth isnt really your name, thats your husbands name. No, i duckworth was been here since before the revolution ba so i want to explain that so this past year has been hard on the Ati Community because that otherness is always been with us now to be the target of the crimes that are just exploding and part of it is because the president of the United States is using a speech. Donald is saying things like kung fu virus and blaming the chinese for the virus but not saying the peoples republic of china but same the Chinese People coming up to chineseamericans and committing crimes against them have been really traumatic for the Ati Community. Infact they crimes have risen 550 percent in our major cities , over 3000 cases of reported hate crimes against aapis. The recorded asvandalism, monday, theft, anything other than the crime. The answer to this might be nothing but i wonder editor if you got a chance to reopen your book now in light of what were seeing in light of bias crimes and even more, how you address the otherness issue, would you add anything . I think i would maybe spend a little bit more time talking about how when it really mattered the identity of america was all that mattered. In my helicopter on that day i talked at length aboutthe shootdown. I think i would have talked d about being in part of the helicopter crew it doesnt matter if youre rich orpoor, black or white or asian or hispanic. Ive been part of doctor cruz where theres one of each flavor and their. Were all different colors and were all americans. And thats why i love the army because it didnt matter who i was or that i was a little halfbreedasian girl. Its only matter if i could shoot straight and whether or not i was willing to carry the mold when someone was out. I would have spent more time on that from a racial perspective and just from thinking of falling in love with the army. Interesting. Its tactually a good segue to the portion of the book where you talk about the shootdown. I read another New York Times interview for this discussion in which you talk about i dont want to consume much pop culture about war because its top for me to watch. How hard was it to put all this on paper . It was hard but i did it all in one single sitting and it was very hardto get away. But i did have to go bac