Huma Abedin, longtime Clinton aide, unexpected figure in 2016 presidential race, to publish memoir

The memoir will include her accounts of working with Hillary Clinton, her marriage and identity.
Abedin

Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff and the ex-wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, is writing a memoir titled "Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds," a coming-of-age story about her largely behind-the-scene's life that later became very public.

The 45-year-old Abedin has been a Clinton staffer since President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary Clinton were in the White House.

To most political observers, she was known as Clinton's polished but quiet aide. The picture change after she married Weiner, a New York Democrat, in 2010 and a year later endured the public scrutiny of Weiner having to resign from Congress over texting lewd photos to women.

Abedin was thrust back into the public stoplight in 2013 when Weiner, a front-runner in the New York City mayoral race, was again caught sexting. Three years later, in the homestretch of Clinton's failed 2016 presidential bid, emails on Weiner's laptop became part of the FBI investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state, again putting her in the spotlight.

The couple, who have a young son, have since divorced. Weiner pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges of sending sexual materials to a minor and was sentenced to 21 months in prison, according to the Associated Press.

Abedin’s book will be published by the Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner and is due for a Nov. 2 release.

The book will be about Abedin's "inspiring story, coming of age as an American Muslim, the daughter of Indian and Pakistani scholars who split their time between Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the UK,” said the publisher in a June 10 announcement, adding the story “grapples with family, legacy, identity, faith, marriage, and motherhood.”

Abedin says in the release: "For most of my life, I was viewed through the lens of others, a refraction of someone else’s pronoun. 'They' as in the parents who raised me; 'she’ as in the woman I worked for; and 'he' as in the man I married."

Abedin has known Clinton since she was a student at George Washington University, when she worked as an intern in 1996 for the then-first lady. She was an aide to Clinton during Clinton’s successful run for the U.S. Senate in 2000; deputy chief of staff during Clinton’s years as secretary of state in the first term of the Obama administration, 2009-2013; and a top adviser during the 2016 election, the Associated Press also reports.