Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (audio)
Source: Audible Audiobook, 12+ hours I am an Amazon Affiliate
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover explores Tara's experiences as a child of survivalists in the mountains of Idaho who also have very restrictive views on Mormonism. As a child, all care was provided by her mother who was an herbalist and midwife. The children were not allowed to go to doctors, nurses, or hospitals. As the family prepared for the end of the world and tried to remain detached from public services, Tara helped her mother collect herbs and worked with her father in the scrap junkyard. Without any public education or barely any homeschooling, Tara entered the classroom for the first time at age 17.
The gaps in her knowledge became very clear to her and her thirst for knowledge propelled her career in education -- taking her to Harvard and Cambridge -- but she also noticed that her family's Mormonism was very different from that of her classmates at Brigham Young University. Her will power to educate herself is amazing, as is her ability to learn things on her own or with very little help until she passes the ACT.
But as she becomes more educated, a sense of disconnect begins to emerge between herself and her family. While listening, it seems as though things between her brother and herself are glossed over and then overly dramatic. It's like watching a train wreck, and I suspect that the things she's writing about that she wrote journal entries about are a bit like "out of body" experiences for her in some ways. She's disconnected from that self and her family. This memoir will have readers feeling that acutely, and its a grieving process that doesn't seem to have reached a conclusion by the end of the book.
For some readers, this could be a trigger given the violence she witnessed and endured throughout her life. Readers will either believe all that occurs from Tara's point of view, or believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. The family has different points of view on these incidents and Westover does the best she can in sharing those early on.
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover is a deep dive into a family life that may seem impossible. For instance, the burns her father sustains and survives is nothing short of a miracle. This is just one incident and result that seems impossible to believe. The overarching theme of how education can set you free, however, should not be ignored. Westover is a talented writer.
RATING: Quatrain