Educated by Tara Westover

Memoir. Nonfiction. Religion. CW: Abuse.  

Rating: 4.5/5

Pages: 368 (12 hrs)

Started: 16 July 2024

Finished: 18 July 2024

Summary: 

    Tara Westover was raised by an ultra-conservative Mormon family in rural Idaho; learning to read the Bible was the extent of her early education. Years later, Tara is a Harvard PhD who has finally achieved the bandwidth and distance she needs to reflect back on her family and her childhood. Using journals and conversations with family and friends to piece together an understanding of what really happened in her childhood of religious brainwashing and abuse, Westover tells the story of her evolution from a scared girl to a woman who has managed to educate herself to liberation.

Thoughts: 

    It's not easy for a book to be both factually interesting and emotionally moving, but this memoir achieves both things. Tara's story of a scared and abused girl freeing herself from her family is a difficult and important story to hear, and I found myself furious at her father and brother's abuse of their power, enraged by her mother's inability to protect her child, and so proud of her evolution into a self-actualized person capable of recognizing the ways she loved her family, and the reasons why she had to leave them. I also found myself enthralled by the descriptions of the conservative Mormon mindset, between distrust of doctors (the explanations of needing to trust all physical wellbeing to God's will was particularly interesting) to the blind belief in the End of Days and Y2K. This book was a fascinating and impactful window into a life very different from my own, and I have so much respect for Westover's reflection and vulnerability--I believe this is a very valuable story to have in the world.