In contemporary society, the majority of us take education for granted — considering it as a basic right as natural as breathing air; Tara Westover’s memoir shatters the illusion of education as universally accessible and subverts our intrinsic sense of entitlement to formal education. This is a hauntingly nostalgic coming-of-age memoir about a young woman’s efforts to use education as an escape from her Mormon fundamentalist life in Idaho. Tara’s voice is reflective, meditative and at times heart-wrenchingly scattered as she attempts to reconstruct her remarkable tale of self-determination and enlightenment. It’s no surprise that Educated is an international bestseller and one of Bill Gates's 5 beloved books of 2018.
Tara’s extraordinary story begins in the mountains of Idaho, she introduces the reader to her Mormon fundamentalist family with a father who believed that “public school is a ploy by the Government to lead children away from God” and a mother who mostly remains in a state of deference to her husband whilst chipping in with her income from mixing up herbal remedies and her “work” as an unlicensed midwife. So begins Tara’s recount of an upbringing plagued with psychological and physical abuse, freakishly frequent and horrendous accidents, and ideological beliefs that progressively intensified into politically charged paranoia.
In a nutshell, Tara’s story is about escaping from constrictive, predefined belief systems to achieve liberation. However, the path to education is treacherous, gut-wrenching, and filled with uncertainty. She writes, “My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.” As Tara was forbidden to go to school, her worldview as a child was entirely shaped by her father — whose bipolar disorder is exemplified by his fervent belief in the second coming of Christ yet refusal for any of his family’s work-site related injuries (no matter lost fingers, gashed legs or horribly burned bodies) to be treated with proper medical attention as his wife’s tinctures were deemed “God’s pharmacy”. It is against this hostile and narrow-minded environment that the seeds of curiosity and thirst for knowledge are planted in Tara, although it meant that she was no longer the daughter her father had raised, a daughter of faith.
Tara’s narrative style is the defining feature of this memoir — it is episodic, contemplative, and without any resentment. At times she uses the stream of consciousness, as if still in the process of finding herself whilst at other times she writes with wisdom beyond her years, reflecting:
to admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s
Tara’s first step towards systemic education and liberation is by taking the ACT (US university entrance exam) without ever being exposed to any formal education. Learning in the Westover household was entirely self-directed and Tara, like her siblings, could learn anything that they could teach themselves after their work was done. Despite the intensifying conflict with her dad’s beliefs (education is the equivalent to whoring after man’s knowledge instead of God’s), Tara gained admission to Brigham Young University and subsequently shocks her classmates into an “utter, almost violent silence” with her ignorance of the Holocaust (as well as Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jr and the fact that Europe is not a country). Such excruciating moments of ignorance are articulated with surprising clarity yet Tara’s inner turmoil is evident, as she feels suspended between fear of the past and fear of the future — writing in her journal “I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child.”
However, the setbacks and uphill struggle to gain a meaningful education is nothing in comparison to the dichotomy and escalating tensions between Tara and her (now estranged) family. Although she was physically and emotionally abused by her older brother, her journey of self-discovery through education is deemed an unforgivable sin. She writes that it seemed that “I had driven a thousand knives into the heart of my own family” and
there was little hope of overpowering the history my father and sisters were creating for me. Their account would claim my brothers first, then it would spread to my aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole valley. I had lost an entire kinship, and for what?
What makes Tara’s story so inspirational is that against all odds that seemed to stack higher and higher against her, her resilience and perseverance to succeed remained. She eventually makes it to Harvard for a fellowship and then pursued a Ph.D. in history at Cambridge whilst struggling with the deeply rooted and tangled familial claims of loyalty, guilt, shame, and love. This psychological tug-of-war is at the root of every decision and every step Tara takes towards her education — she quotes another student who said “positive liberty is freedom from internal constraints” yet she struggles to reconcile between her desire for positive liberty through self-mastery and her family’s irrational beliefs.
It is only upon the final, heart-wrenching break from most of her family that I realized how truly courageous and exceptional Tara’s testimonial is. The fact is that most of us will never be put in such an impossible situation to choose between family and education — yet this is the crux of Tara’s journey towards self-determination and autonomy. Although the physical and psychological scars are laid bare for all to see, her voice is never cruel despite writing so candidly about her father’s most bizarre beliefs and the ostracisation from her family. At the end of the book, you can’t help but feel that all the sacrifices were worth it. Tara has an uncanny ability to normalize her unimaginable upbringing so that it resonates with the audience. After all, she concludes that “the past was a ghost, insubstantial, unaffecting. Only the future had weight.”
Tara’s process of self-discovery and determination to achieve enlightenment through education is beautifully captured in this memoir and this is the kind of book that will appeal to everyone. Some critics say that this testimonial is simply about another young person who left their family in the search for freedom and the self. But it is so much more than that, pick it up and have a read, I promise it will be worth your time.
