5 Reasons Why You Should Read ‘Educated’ by Tara Westover

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• Title: Educated
• Author: Tara Westover
• Publisher: Windmill Books
• Pub. date: 1 November 2018
• Series: none
• Pages: 384
• Genres: non-fiction, memoir

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. She spent her summers bottling peaches and her winters rotating emergency supplies, hoping that when the World of Men failed, her family would continue on, unaffected.

She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in doctors or hospitals. According to the state and federal government, she didn’t exist.

As she grew older, her father became more radical, and her brother, more violent. At sixteen Tara decided to educate herself. Her struggle for knowledge would take her far from her Idaho mountains, over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d travelled too far. If there was still a way home.

EDUCATED is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

Content warning: animal cruelty, blood, car accident, child neglect, domestic violence, emotional abuse, gaslighting, gore, mental illness, physical abuse, religion-based abuse, verbal abuse

When I was Googling ‘lists of books everyone should read’ I came across Educated on quite a few of those lists, so I grew curious and actively searched for it. I got extremely lucky and found my copy in a sale at a local bookstore last year. Going into the book I only knew that it was a memoir and whatever the blurb said, so it is safe to say that I was blown away by the time I finished reading this book.

1. Tara’s upbringing.

Educated is pretty much the first book I have read that tackles the Mormon Survivalist way of living, so it was a disturbingly eye-opening read. I was deeply appalled by how hospitals and schools were forbidden, and how modern medicine (including vaccines!) was replaced by homeopathic cures and prayers. It was frightening to read about burns and cerebral haemorrhages being treated this way!

2. Tara’s experience with abuse.

Rather than the details of the emotional and physical abuse she went through with her father and her brother Sean, I was more moved by how Tara detailed her own feelings about it. The confusion, the denial, the anger. Tara does an excellent job of conveying these emotions to the reader and it is very impactful.

3. Major academia vibes!

In the second half of the book, Tara spends the majority of her life in academic institutions like Brigham Young University, Cambridge University and Harvard. Tara’s eloquent descriptions of her experiences in these settings were very vulnerable and honest. She also weaves such magical and moving descriptions of how it feels to actually be there and experience it firsthand.

4. Tara’s imposter syndrome during schooling.

I was so inspired by her journey there and how she struggled to feel like she belonged among the academics in university. Having been through five years of medicine in university, I have experienced a fair amount of imposter syndrome and I still do. So, even though Tara comes from a background that is very different from mine, I could relate to her struggles with finding anchors to tether herself in these strange and exciting places and people. I am sure many others would too.

5. The unapologetic honesty behind Tara’s words.

Tara’s writing is very unfiltered and powerful. In writing her memoir, she is looking back and evaluating everything that seemed normal to her when she was a child. I liked how she picked and turned every stone as she tried to remember the memories accurately. It gives a rawness to the tone of the book that really affected me and made me feel like I was reading her deepest, darkest thoughts. Those uncertain, vulnerable moments when we don’t know if what happened actually happened or if we are making it up as we go.

I fell so deeply in love with this story that I actually started annotating halfway through. This story left me astonished, grateful and inspired. It is a deeply humbling experience to read about what I have always considered as a normal part of my life has been a privilege to someone else.

Tara Westover is an American author. Raised in Idaho by a father who opposed public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her family’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that, she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. In 2014 she earned a PhD in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and currently she is a senior research fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. Educated is her first book.

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Have you read Educated or do you plan on picking it up?