“Educated” is a mentally, emotionally impactful memoir of Tara Westover that is impossible to put down. During the entirety of the book, it honestly felt that it would have been more convincing if this book were to be fiction with all the unbelievable and startling tales Westover shares about her life growing up.
Westover was born to and raised by her Mormon fundamentalist parents and lived a very unusual life, almost completely isolated from the mainstream of society. Especially her father, forbade trips to the hospital or kept his children from receiving proper education at public schools, because of his strong religious beliefs and disapproval towards the government. When one of her brothers was terribly burnt by a fire due to an explosion, instead ofheading straight to the emergency room, her mother remedied it with her “healing herbs” that she had made on her own. And in order to perfect keeping off the “radar of the government,” four of his seven children did not even have birth certificates.
Throughout her younger days, Westover was completely dictated by the narrow view, thoughts, beliefs of her father and it was impossible for her to form her own way of seeing the world. However, she knew there was a different world beyond the borders of her small home in the mountains of Idaho, and her thirst for a better understanding and knowledge eventually led her to school herself and get admitted to Brigham Young University.
At age 17, she had, for the first time in her life, started to get proper education and with that, her whole life took a drastic turn. Up until then, she did not even know significant historic events such as the Holocaust or the civil rights movement. It was from that moment on that Westover immersed herself in learning and studying like there was no tomorrow, and one thing led to another, she ended up earning a Ph.D. in History at Cambridge University.
Her triumph in education was not merely one of academic education, but rather more importantly finally learning to have her own voice and establishing her own unique way of viewing the world. From a young, uneducated daughter who strictly lived by her father’s rules and perspective, she had grown to become an independent individual with her own moral code of what is right and what is wrong.
In her own words, she went from “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,” to “The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she [her mother] would 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 education.”
I have always thought education only belonged in textbooks and subjects like science and world history. To me, it was about how much knowledge I had, what scores I got on my exams, and how well I understood a material. However, “Educated” offered me a major shift in my view and motivation in education. Education was more about building a “self,” creating a voice to call my own, and finding the strength to navigate my life. And to this day, this awareness is the motivation and compass that leads me when taking the next step in my education, especially as a college student.
I honestly would like to recommend this book to everyone because it truly opens your eyes in viewing education and life in general. Admittedly, thisrollercoaster of a book is definitely not a happy read and will instead put you through so many different emotions and leave you deeply looking back on your own life. There is also a myriad of details of this book that I could not fit in this column, so I highly encourage everyone reading this give “Educated” a read.