Summary of Educated : A Memoir by Tara Westover

It is always strange reviewing a memoir, because it feels a bit unfair to ‘rate’ someone’s personal experiences. Westover is being vulnerable with the reader in her memoir, and I appreciate her doing so. I read this for a book club and had the chance to discuss it with others who brought up some interesting points as well. Much of the discussion revolved around the author’s privilege of being a fairly respected but typical ‘white girl from Idaho’. She was known in her local community, and her community helped her get where she is—through employing her, letting her get her first steps out of her household, and others. I would have liked the author to reflect on this a bit more, as well as looking at how she was able to get where she is.

She is of course very grateful to her supportive brothers, who pushed her on this path. Without them, she might never have felt that she was worthy to go to school. She was also pushed by certain professors and others to apply for scholarships and programs, all while not feeling like she was deserving of them. I can understand this feeling somewhat, and it helped me empathize with her; but it is odd thinking about how so much of her success is due to the chance occurrence of having these supportive figures in her life that helped uplift her.

The author’s family is incredibly nutty. Looking at the mother’s so-called response to the author’s memoir, it is clear they still expect to gaslight Westover and make her out to be the villain; as with any perspective, it’s good to take things with a grain of salt. But I find it rather easy to side with Westover on this one. No family ought to love their children conditionally; I understand that better than most, unfortunately, and it really is an awful feeling. I’m glad that the author was able to make her own ‘found family’ and find supportive people in her extended family. I hope that she is able to move on past the trauma of her family and her life; writing this memoir probably helped a ton. Cutting off family isn’t easy, but it is what the author deserves—she deserves to be free to make her own choices and live her own life.

Westover is clearly a skilled writer (a PhD from Cambridge is no laughing matter, after all), and I appreciated the eloquent descriptions of her youth, growing up on the mountain, as well as her experiences to broadening her experience in the world by traveling to Rome and Paris. Sometimes the episodes were tough to read, and other times they felt a little amorphous and random, but overall this memoir was a delight to read. My main takeaway from this book is motivation—I have been in an academic slump despite starting a new program. The feeling of not being worthy and self-doubt are constant themes in the memoir that Westover has to overcome, and through reading it, I felt myself begin to examine these impulses in my own thoughts. I hope I can use her experience and become more confident in my academic self-worth, too.

As a chid, I'd been aware that although my family attended the same church as everyone in town, our religion was not the same. They believed in modesty; we practiced it. They believed in God's power to heal; we left our injuries in God's hands. they believed in preparing for the Second Coming; we were actually prepared.

This has been on my 'to read' list for a while and was added after being mentioned in Obama's favorite books in 2018. It took a few years but I am glad that I got around to the story.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that it took me a few chapters to realize this was a memoire. When the cast of siblings were being introduced I figured they would have reminders about who they were as the story progressed and tended to gloss over those that were "b characters".

As a result of this I was slightly unfamiliar with names of brothers and sisters as the story went on. When I came across an unfamiliar name I wondered if they were a spouse of a sibling or an actual sibling. In the end, and what is important to the story, is that family is what you make of it and you can be as close to an in-law as you would a blood sibling.

Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my own father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind.

Tara grows up in a very difficult environment. Her parents have control over their children and established a system of dependence. I couldn't relate to the extremes that Tara was raised in but there were similarities and found those equally compelling and concerning.

I never uttered the words "I'm from Idaho" until I'd left it.

I cheered for a sports team because my Mother did. I liked a particular type of vehicle because my Dad did. Some of these ideals I carry with me still, others have been abandoned as I formed my own opinion. How many other exist within me still that I haven't attributed back to my upbringing? What misconceptions or beliefs have I not questioned and challenged? Do my childhood friends view me as an outsider because I didn't follow their standard story?

...how a person ought to weigh their special obligations to kin against their obligations to society as a whole.

This is the kind of story I would love to dig in to deeper, discuss with others, or even write an essay on. These emotions aren't common and it's invigorating to be reminded the power a book can have on you.

Why is Tara compelled to return to her family? How can Tara be so blinded to warning signs about her destructive family? Do the Westover kids succeed because of their life with their parents or in spite of it? The Westover's are guilty of gaslighting and on a macro level could be used to illustrate how larger groups of like minded people can subscribe to a reality unlike our own.

The importance of mental health is explored but even thought the 00's were not that long ago such conversations weren't as acceptable as they are in the 20's. What was enabled and what could have been avoided in the Westover household?

It was then I realized how cruelly I had judged her, how my perception of her had been distorted, because I'd been looking at her through my father's harsh lens.

The introspective journey I took while reading this book kept me occupied during the brief times I wasn't reading. There were numerous situations and quotes that I related to and some I had identified as being skewed and was grateful for that opportunity to correct these and, in some cases, spend time with that person before they passed and remember them for my view and not one forced on me.

Dad could command this science, could decipher its language, decrypt its logic, could bend and twist and squeeze from it the truth. But as it passed through him, it turned to chaos.

This is a memoire about a family but the issues discussed can easily be applied on a larger scale, but affecting change outward requires a journey within and is one we may be on for the duration of our lives.

The word and the way Shawn said it hadn't changed; only my ears were different. They no longer heard the jingle of a joke in it. What they heard was a signal, a call through time, which was answered with a mounting conviction: that never again would I allow myself to be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand.

This is not a book about homeschooling, it is about abuse, and that made it hard to read for me. She is a very good writer, and very good at describing physical injury and the subjective experience of being physically assaulted, which led me to skim significant portions of the chapters in the middle section, which thankfully allowed me to finish the book quicker. It is tempting to ascribe any or all of this horribly abusive upbringing to the convergence of mental illness and survivalist zealotry, but the sad reality is that these tyrants of hearth and home are rife in communities everywhere, without reference to politics, creed, or material well-being. The fact that all of this happened two mountain ranges over from where I sit, in a corner of southeastern Idaho that I have never visited or considered previously, only adds color, not meaning. The rather live (and now, very public) nature of this intrafamily dispute is a little discomforting (see, e.g. this August 2020 newspaper interview with Mother: www.hjnews.com/news/local/mother-of-educated-author-tells-her-own-story-about-life-off-grid-in-idaho/article_c3f3e01c-5a81-53f1-8212-461b8670b897.html). All of that being said, when her Dad is miraculously nursed back to health after yet again foolishly endangering his own life for no good reason, and he then "described the explosion as a tender mercy from the Lord," claimed he "was never in any danger," and promised to immediately re-commence the dangerous activity that had caused the injury in the first place, I couldn't help but think of our Big Wet President feeling 20 years younger after COVID, and all the damage that a culture that promotes such thinking has wrought over the years.

As a story of growing up, intellectual and emotional maturation, and the development of Self - not to mention as an intense and nearly unbelievable series of life events - this book exceeds almost anything I have read. It's past Angela's Ashes (memoir) or The Color Purple (fiction).

For some reason I can only compare it to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, even though the particulars are so different. (Rural, survivalist, Mormon white girl enters 21st century academia vs. midcentury black hustler enters prison, finds religion, international fame, and disillusionment....) I guess it's the sense that neither book could possibly have been as powerful if it were written any earlier or later in the author's life. It's the narrative about a mind, but one that is inescapably tethered to a specific body and hostile surroundings. It's abstract and still drenched in messy concrete events.

In six months I'll still be grappling with this. Full of wonder.

An incredible story of education and perseverance. If only we got to hear about the education. I have so many questions after finishing. How did the author go from not knowing to read the text in between the pictures of her college textbook to having a tenured Cambridge professor tell her "I have been teaching at Cambridge for 30 years, and this is one of the best essays I’ve read.”? What did she think of Cambridge? Harvard? If she did any extracurriculars outside of class, what were they? What, after growing up in indoctrinated seclusion, did the author think of traveling with others around Europe? Living in England? Visiting the Middle East? Arabic? What about when she lived in Paris? French? Anyone outside of Idaho in general?

This book is mostly focused (regardless of the author’s location) in rural Clifton, Idaho, the source of all of the author's misery. It is a thorough memoir on the lasting effects of gaslighting, Mormon fundamentalism, and physical and emotional abuse. I guess I just lost patience with the many unexplained gaps, passing mentions of major life events, and equivocal narrative.

I'm kind of conflicted about rating this book.

On one hand, it was a compelling read. It kept you interested and wanting to keep reading to find out "what happens next". So that is worth at least 4 stars in and of itself. Right?

On the other hand, the book seemed a trifle, how do you say? embellished. You know, liberal usage of poetic license up in here. And if some parts of the book were embellished, other parts seemed to be missing altogether. I've learned in life, when something doesn't seem to make sense, or things don't add up, it's because you don't have all the data. Data be missing big time yo.

Forgive me if I have a hard time believing someone who had no real schooling, EVER, could teach herself trigonometry (among other things like how to form a proper paragraph). Trig, when she fully admitted she didn't even really understand how fractions and decimals worked. Uh, no. Believe me, I tried taking calculus without first understanding trig and it just doesn't work like that. And this was after taking and acing an intermediate algebra course. And I might not have a PhD but I'm pretty good at math. She says her sister tested at about a 5th grade level as an adult and how in the hell did the author get a PhD with the same supposed scholastic exposure? (none) Doesn't make sense.

The author fully admitted on multiple occasions that she was an unreliable narrator and perhaps didn't always remember things as they actually happened. Yeah, I think that is the case with this one. Equal parts pure fabrication and willful omittance. So minus 1.

Educated came up on the best books of 2018. I think after I saw it on Obama’s list I added it to good reads and placed a hold at the library. Fast forward 6 months and it shows up in my kindle.
Initially, I was a little soured on the ‘rags to riches’ summary but I started in right away as it was a decent sized book and I only had 3 weeks to finish it. The first chapter hooked me. Although there are many stories of a kind, medical accidents, ranting religious father, crazy dangerous work, and abusive family members, I found myself drawn in. At times, it’s a bit like watching a slow motion car accident.
I found about halfway through, the perspective of Tara changed. She went from being a somewhat objective viewer of her past to being the main character. The situations were closer to home and she had less objective perspective on what was happening. For the last third of the book I had a knot in my stomach.
I’m not sure I enjoyed the story, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the point. The memoir itself was striking and is firmly lodged in my mind. The writing though. The writing is excellent. Tara is clear, descriptive, wistful, and engaging. It’s worth the time to read it.