Educated – Tara Westover
Hey Everyone! We had a great conversation on the book Educated, by Tara Westover. Wow! I was so overwhelmed with the book, as were many of you. Some of you mentioned that it caused you to look back on your own lives and re-examine or explore how things were for you growing up. I confess I did the same thing. It caused me to be very introspective about things I hadn’t been before. Needless to say, after reading this book, I have started my own journey of self-discovery and that’s not a bad thing, even if it is many years late.
Maybe it was the author’s writing style; maybe it was the way she was able to convey what happened in such a matter-of-fact way that it seemed almost devoid of emotion sometimes, like she was writing about someone else. Maybe that’s what it takes to write about such terrible events experienced at such a young age. All of us found different parts of the book, or feelings that it evoked in us, that we could relate to. That’s a pretty powerful way to start a discussion!
In the book, Tara recounts a childhood growing up with a fundamentalist Mormon family whose father was hell-bent on being prepared for the end of the world. The extreme highs and lows this man went through later led the author to conclude he probably had a mental illness although when you’re a child, you would never understand that. I mean, how could you? And the mother? Well, her inability to stand up to her husband, as well as some of her own personality quirks, demonstrates why she was unable to be supportive to her daughter early on.
The father seems to lurch from one crisis to another, dragging the children along as accomplices, whether they want to participate or not. The number of times the author and her brothers get physically injured as a result of the father’s maniacal pursuits is alarming, as is the mother’s lackadaisical concern for their wellbeing. To say it’s crazy is just tipping the iceberg. Even one of her brothers is abusive to the point where had he been reported to authorities, he would have been imprisoned – at least I would hope so. During our discussion, the topic of the brother’s abuse came up and we questioned whether or not there had been sexual abuse and the author just couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge it. We just don’t know but we wondered.
Westover struggles to find her own identity and when it is clear to her that she doesn’t share the same beliefs as her parents, notably where school is concerned, she finds quiet ways of rebellion to pursue that independence. She just wants to go to school. That fact that she studies on her own and eventually makes it into a university at the age of sixteen is pretty amazing. That she continues to excel even after that is inspirational. She excelled in spite of her family. Wow!
Probably the most disturbing part of the story was that even after she escaped the incredibly abusive childhood she had endured, she still kept coming home, trying to connect with a family who no longer understood her. That was heartbreaking to me and frightening all at the same time, because I was sure that at this point it was only a matter of time before she was very seriously injured. That she wrote the story was the only assurance that she would get safely away from them. Although it was heartbreaking to her, she would finally come to understand that she needed to quit the family to save herself. So she did.
I heard long ago that you know you’ve read a good book when it stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it. That’s what this book is to me. It continues to haunt me and inspire me all at the same time. If you haven’t read it, pick it up. It’s a memorable story.
