Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover– 352 pages

Book Blurb:

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag.” The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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The memoir Educated is about a woman that has no birth certificate, no idea when her birthday is, yet manages to get herself through Harvard and Cambridge. This story is a testament to nature versus nurture, ambition and the quest for more out of life.

The writing in this book is outstanding. The way in which Westover can express her emotions and parse out her feelings after reading her journals is brilliant. I’m sure the writing of this book was somewhat therapeutic as well as adding a final nail to the coffin on her tenuous relationships with most of her family members.

The adage that you don’t know what you don’t know couldn’t have been proven truer than by how the Westover kids were brought up. The children were raised to believe that the end of the world was coming and were constantly preparing for the end of humanity. Spending their days canning peaches, digging trenches, burying gas tanks and securing weapons took precedence over any type of education. Additionally, it was ingrained in them that doctors were part of the government conspiracy to only make you sicker. Their mother, no matter what, did all healing at home. Burns, broken bones, rotten teeth and wound care was done by her limited resources and knowledge and survival was due to G-d’s will working his way through their mother’s hands.

This is a fascinating memoir that will make you think long and hard about the parental influence, abuse, religious fanatics, independence, sibling relationships and the importance of an education.

Quotes I liked:

You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

-“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.”

-“The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she should have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”

-“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”