Educated – Tara Westover

Synopsis

Educated is a brilliantly written account by Tara Westover of her life and the choices she had to make to truly be herself. Young Tara grows up in a conservative Mormon household, works with her father in his scrap yard, has never gone to school, never to a hospital, does not even have a birth certificate. As she grows older she starts to see the world differently and also realises her handicap without a proper education early-on in her life. Despite her abnormally difficult circumstances, she is able to successfully move forward and create her own path. She earns her Master’s and Doctorate from Cambridge University. This journey forward is what she calls as her education. 

My Thoughts

The author provides a candid account on her upbringing and her dysfunctional family. We get to know of the physical and emotional abuse she goes through, her helplessness and subsequently her trauma. She eventually comes to understand that the violence and the show of power will not stop and that neither parent will take her side.

The violence, abuse and markedly the neglect was difficult to read. Can you call upon your family when you seemingly don’t matter to them? Can you trust them to be on your side when you need them the most? Tara could not. Her father suffered from paranoia and his priority never seemed to be his family’s well-being. We see her happiness and relief when she thinks her mother might take her side and her feeling of betrayal when she finds out otherwise. She struggles with wanting to be with them, but also her desperate need to escape.

Quote

“I saw myself as unbreakable, as tender as stone. At first I merely believed this, until one day it became the truth. Then I was able to tell myself, without lying, that it didn’t affect me, that he didn’t affect me, because nothing affected me. I didn’t understand how morbidly right I was. How I had hollowed myself out. For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that it’s not affecting me, that was its effect.”

She lays it all out, for us the readers. The dual life she was trying to live so that she can keep both parts of her – the girl from the mountain and the girl who is smart and self reliant. She goes through the effect of the trauma she did not realise she had. How she is reluctant to go for therapy and not asking for help. She is constantly undermining herself even though others can truly see how good she was.

The true highlight of her story, for me, is how she self-learns and uses every roadblock as a stepping stone for her success. And she had a lot of those roadblocks. From not having basic knowledge to getting educated on her own and earning a Doctorate shows how much she was determined and driven towards her goal.

Do I recommend it?

Yes! – plain and simple. Educated is a story about having the courage to make hard decisions – it will hurt us and others around us but it is required nonetheless. Tara’s story is inspiring and the writing engaging. Despite all odds she faced, she is able to transform herself and attain something that cannot be done without self determination and dedication.

Reading Educated created in me a rollercoaster of emotions. I know I am reading only one side of the story (and the reason why I stay away from memoirs in general) but some chapters made me furious and some just made me want to punch something.

We take a lot of things for granted. Her story made me think, ponder, and feel extremely grateful for the easy path I got.