Educated: A Memoir by Tara WestoverMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Phew. What a memoir!
First, let me say that I read this book with a bit of trepidation because I am a homeschooling parent, and this book is widely described as being about a girl who was homeschooled by survivalist parents. As most reviews emphasize, however, Tara was certainly not offered a "normal" homeschooling experience. In an interview with NPR, she says "there was not a lot of school taking place. We had books, and occasionally we would be kind of sent to read them. But for example, I was the youngest child, and I never took an exam, or I never wrote an essay for my mother that she read or nothing like kind of getting everyone together and having anything like a lecture. So it was a lot more kind of if you wanted to read a book, you could, but you certainly weren't going to be made to do that."
I quickly realized, however, that this book has little to do with academic education, with whether Tara should have been sent to public school or not. This book is about Tara's education as a human being, as a part of the world outside of her family.
Tara's parents were paranoid survivalists who completely manipulated and controlled her world (and that of her siblings). She had no access to reading material other than Mormon texts and the Bible. No newspapers, no history books, no television. Whatever her parents told her, was her reality. She believed entirely that the government was coming for them, that the world was close to ending, that everyone besides her family was hellbound. She believed that she was dirty, dumb, and a whore. She believed that the medical community was a pit of vipers. She believed it was her duty to cater to her father's every whim and, later, to her brother's. She believed she was worthless.
And yet she had something inside of her, a spark of brilliance and determination that even her father's cruelty, her mother's denial, and her brother's brutality could not keep down. Tara is not just a survivor but a victor. She overcame a horrific childhood full of danger, of physical, and emotional abuse (though she does contend that she had happy moments) to earn a PhD from Harvard. Her real education, though, comes as she begins to see the world through a different lens than her father's. Her real education comes when she sheds her former self, piece by painful piece, to discover not just who Tara is, but who this world is, and who Tara is in the world.
In some ways this memoir reminded me of The Glass Castle, but it is not as beautifully written as Walls' memoir. Walls was more than a decade older than Westover when she wrote her amazing memoir, and I suspect Westover's memoir has more of a raw, open wound feeling because of her proximity to her childhood.
I left this novel feeling sad and disheartened because I know there are so many children in our country who are raised on hate and fear, and so many of them don't have the willpower that Tara had to separate herself from them. And the cycle continues.
Happy for Tara that she climbed out of the pit, and hopeful that she may inspire others to do the same.
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