Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a powerful memoir. Very well written with the objectivity of a woman who has processed her experiences and made her peace with the girl she was and the woman she is. Tara's childhood was filled with violence and extremist ideology. Her father faithfully read his scriptures and made interpretations that were extreme. He built a more strict religion than his Mormon neighbors yet continued to move the goal posts to fit his mood.

This is not a book about Mormonism. This the movement of one girl breaking free of the internal and external restraints that held her hostage. She gives a fair and balanced account of members in her family. None are cast as completely villainous or saintly. Yet the underlying current is that the home was ruled by a controlling father, deeply troubled by multiple mental illnesses left untreated and unchecked. Bipolar, paranoid, violent and, at times, psychotic, he preached anti-establishment, anti-government, and end of the world.

Additionally, the author experiences a complicated, contradictive relationship with an older brother that switched quickly from protector to violent protagonist. There is a parallel of sorts between the brother and the father. Both are capable of horrific abuse and neglect yet also of deep love. Neither are mentally stable yet the people surrounding them allow their reality to dictate their own existence. It is an extreme example of group gaslighting to the point that the sane questions his or her sanity.

In the same valley 65 years earlier, my dad stood and stretched his back after thinning sugar beets. In a moment of clarity, he saw his life if he stayed complacent; thinning sugar beets, hungry and poor. He quit that day and announced he was going to college. Without support or money, he worked whatever jobs he could get, joined ROTC, and eventually earned a Ph.D.

What the author so beautifully illustrates through her words is how she gained freedom through education, self analysis through historians and therapy, and how her journey, although still continuing, is one that she chooses and can enjoy.