Educated: A Memoir

Halfway through Educated: A Memoir he described an occurrence, as she remembered it, in her journal. Her brother, Shawn, then described to her the event in a completely different way. She wrote that description on the opposite page of her journal. She made the point that neither account referenced or superseded the other. To her it was a pivotal moment in her life, and her first step towards freedom. I reread the passage several times, and discussed with my wife. She wrote her own remembered account first, so why write her brother’s account without any mentioning of its falseness? Why call it an incipient act of freedom? By the time I read the last page I understood this, and much more. Her story is an incredible epic of the first thirty years of her life. She enrolled in college at the age of 17 with no formal schooling and the barest minimum of family home-schooling. Ten years later she earned her PHD from Cambridge. Along the way she had to learn the basics from everything from bubble test-sheets, to hygiene, medical care, social graces and friendship. She writes straightforward accounts of terrible accidents in her father’s scrapyard, on the highway, and at constructions sites. He weaves a description of a dysfunctional family that somehow functions. It is a caring family, which is careless with how the effects of its actions on each other. Out of familiar chaos emerged not one, but three offspring with PhDs. Sprinkled along the way are unexpected vivid descriptions of her Idaho home, of Cambridge dinners or her foreign travels. She touches on her studies infrequently, but meaningfully. As an undergrad she learned for the first time of the civil rights movement, feminism and the holocaust. She struggled to acquire the simplest skills of a college student, succeeding enough to impress her professor and to win an honor semester in Cambridge. Afterward she won a Gates Cambridge scholar ship to do her graduate work at Cambridge. Much, out of necessity, is touched upon without elaboration. There are the people who have help her along the way, and the friendships that developed. Also, are the writings of thinkers and scholars that intrigued her and gave her insight into her own struggles. Finally, is her nervous breakdown that nearly ended her chance of earning her PhD. In each case she says just enough to further the main message of her story. Her story is one of struggling for freedom from the life, and family, she found herself in. Her arguably deranged and domineering father had the deepest hook into her. Her mother and one brother also played dominate rolls in family dynamics. Her sisters and sisters-in-law also appear in recounting her odyssey to liberation. As a student of history, she struggles to see a truth she can accept in the in the stories of others. She mentions angry tirades against her parents, but her account is free of rancor. She loves her parents and, in their way, they love her. Her struggle, and liberation, came down to understanding the gulf of difference between them. Tara Westover’s story is unusual among similar freedom-from-mental-oppression stories I’ve read, but it has given me much to think about an perhaps reread. I plan to give this book to someone I know who has her own family struggle.

This amazing book, destined to be a classic, kept me up at night and then well into the following day. It should be required reading for courses in psychology , counseling and family therapy. The memoir is of a young girl in a family of 7 children in a survivalist Mormon family. The patriarch was mentally ill, possibly bipolar. He used his extreme interpretation of Mormonism to emotionally abuse, bully and intimidate each member of the family including his long suffering and submissive wife. He was "better" than the rest whom he called gentiles and Illiterati. By claiming a direct line to God, the father achieved a power over his family that defies the imagination. He .had bouts of mania when he took chances with their safety and well being. But God would protect them.. Repeatedly he refused common sense protection of his family. God would protect them. His depressive bouts left him bedridden while requiring the family to take him to see his parents in Arizona to recover. He was catered to and idolized. Defying him was defying God. Women, especially, came in for his scorn. They were little more than indentured servants. As with so many of these male dominated groups, the women were perceived as temptresses and whores. Freud would have had a field day with that perception. The mother appeared to have pseudo insight but was incapable of supporting her children in the face of incomprehensible emotional and physical abuse.; The existence of this family within a Mormon community yet so outside the boundaries of reasonable Mormon tenants begs the question: what responsibility does the broader community have to protect vulnerable children? This is not about Mormonism but a small community and extended family in Idaho that turned away and ignored neglect and abuse when children did not have birth certificates, were not schooled even at home, were not immunized, not taken to doctors, were repeatedly seriously injured, were dressed in filthy rags, and were told the Government and Medical Establishment was the enemy... The enemy was actually within that home. The enemy was this very mentally ill and destructive father. I think of the Turpin family, abusing their children but hidden. This family was neglectful in plain sight. The litany of serious injuries sustained by the children was chilling as was the father's cavalier dismissal of their safety. But willful neglect was one thing, sustained and brutal sibling abuse is quite another. All dysfunctional families have lies they tell themselves, their teachers, authority figures, extended family etc. e;g;, yes, we are home - schooled (not). They have secrets. . But the worst secret and lie that persisted like a rotting cancer was the denial of severe physical abuse inflicted on several of the siblings over the years by one extraordinarily disturbed son. The son would have murderous rages and then the apologies would start...the injured sibling was forced to forgive. Classic spousal abuse but in this case it was a sibling causing the abuse who should have been removed from the family, placed in a treatment program. Instead no one talked about it, the siblings didn't tell each other what had happened until they compared notes as adults and most horrific of all, the parents denied it happened, demanded "proof" and allowed this monster of a son to continue abusing girlfriends, his wife, his dog Diego.(I would have had him locked up for life for just this part of the story). .. In the end, the parents and this sibling bullied the family into staying silent. Only the daughter, with great effort, recognized what was going on. She made many attempts to connect with her parents but they pulled closer into their delusions. This daughter, extraordinarily intelligent and determined escapes, becomes well educated but pays a price, doubting herself up until almost the end, The writing was clear and perceptive. The author has survived but the story is still chilling. Sometimes children from an abusive background only survive with a "parentectomy". I do wonder if the story is finished. The sadistic bully of a son now has a family of his own (wife and two children) that he has shown himself willing to abuse.

Adorei o livro. A história é incrível. Uma menina, que é educada em casa, passa no vestibular e conta suas memórias familiares, da universidade e, depois, do seu doutorado em Cambridge. É uma trajetória impressionante. A rotina familiar é maluca. O pai um mórmon radical que vê comunistas debaixo da cama. Não admite que os filhos frequentem as escolas para não serem contaminados pela "doutrina socialista". Da mesma forma, não permite o uso de medicamentos, muito menos de ir se tratar em um hospital. A mãe, uma parteira, prepara "poções mágicas" para todo tipo de doença. Por incrível que pareça, a família se torna um sucesso comercial e renega a filha bem educada. A experiência de uma jovem aluna, sem nenhum contato prévio com a escola, nas salas de uma universidade é contada de forma agradável e engraçada. Para um professor, como eu, percebe-se uma autonomia muito maior nas universidades americanas quando comparadas com as nossas. O apoio da igreja, do estado e de bons professores é determinante no seu progresso. O livro é um sucesso. Foi recomendado pelo Bill Gates e pelo Obama. Eu também recomendo fortemente.

A bit intense at times, but very interesting reading

This is one of the most memorable books I’ve ever read.! It is interesting and so well written. Is a very intimate and honest read. With non pretentious notes. The second part is more agile than the first, but the book in the whole is amazing. I liked so much as is this portrait of a family living in a religious community and how a girl so in need of learning and reading and being educated, deals with so much prejudice and social pressure. After I finished the book I was so interested that I went on line to watch Tara Westover interviews and talks about her autobiographical experience. One of the books I will definitely remember for ever.

Really a gr8 book. This book really touched me.

This book is a must to read for everyone. Westover's writing is superb and demonstrates themes of struggles and overcoming said struggles. Before this book, I used to believe that symbolism was a lazy writing method, but the way Westover writes with it is absolutely amazing. Even as you read the last chapter, you still fondly remember all the details from chapter 1.