For our November read, Ariel and I picked up Educated by Tara Westover. Though this was a tough book for us to read, it offered lots of information, giving us insight into the life of people who have unresolved trauma. Please check the content notes before diving into this book! Ariel’s comments are in bold. Let’s take a look at the synopsis and then we will dive into our discussion.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled 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 severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, 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 Notes: Physical and verbal abuse, mental illness, trauma, animal cruelty
Educated – Whole book Discussion
First of all, Educated was a tough book to read and I am thankful that I had you, Ariel, to read and discuss this with. Apart from the insights of the book itself, we got a chance to talk about some sensitive issues and share about our lives with each other.
Yes agreed! This book brought up a lot of hard personal things, and with so many people raving about this book, it kind of astonished me how different my expectations of this book was from the reality of our reading experience.
I don’t think I could ever be prepared for the real life stories that we read in this book. I reread the synopsis just now and felt while it did try to warn us, the gravity of the situation can only be felt through Tara’s words. Perseverance has so many faces and sometimes, an outside person is able to recognize that while we internally might not be able to. I felt that her reflections while recounting the events pointed to that a bit.
Yes definitely! This book accurately portrays how tough it is to get out of a toxic situation, and hopefully people will find more empathy in themselves for those who have to work and struggle in their recovery and healing from abusive trauma, and how that recovery is not linear.
I agree. Tara is able to put into words, situations that people who are going through them in real time would find it hard to express.
I have noticed this with other books where most of the writing would be in the past tense but with traumatic events, the tense would change and I would find myself reading in the present tense. Educated had a couple of those instances as well and that made it more impactful. How real she still feels it is. Have you found this writing style in other books too, Ariel?
I think Educated resonated on a different note because of the more personal implications of family trauma and toxicity, and because we have personal experience with that, it impacted us a little more close-to-home than others. I’ve seen other books that I have found myself feeling emotional for or with in a more empathetic way, but never a “oh, I know *exactly* how that feels” like this.
That’s a great point.
What did you think about Tara’s pursuit of education and the topics that she ultimately researched?
I think it was really cool how she was able to reconcile her own history (Mormonism) with the history she never learned, ultimately earning her a PhD in history. It’s amazing how fortunate she was to have people who believed in her when they did, and who launched her into positions of success in Cambridge and Harvard. She worked so hard, and earned everything she worked for, and it is really cool to see how her journey landed her so far away from her origins.
Yes, that was a prime example of finding something she loved and was passionate about and using it to propel herself in her career and life. Having a support system is really important and I am glad she found it in friends, if not in family. Thinking more about the teachers and educators who helped her, it speaks to the other side of education, that along the way we are bound to meet teachers who will care for us and help us move forward, see potential in us that we can’t see ourselves.
Concluding thoughts
For this book, we decided to only use four of our eight reading experience criteria. We also didn’t give it any stars. Personally, I always find memoirs hard to rate. Educated was such a unique and heartbreaking story that I cannot bring myself to rate it. It is real life and rating it seems unfair.
This book is not an easy read, and as a memoir it reads very well. Tara’s experiences are valid, and the memoir seems to be a way for her to further her own growth and journey. This type of recovery seems so intensely personal, that I really don’t know if I could recommend it to anyone who isn’t specifically studying family abuse and trauma.
Tara’s life story has much to offer but it is a hard book. We again advise taking a look at the content notes and being mentally prepared to get into the material, especially if you have a history of abuse and trauma.
Interested in reading Educated and adding to our discussion? Find it on all retail stores. Here are the Amazon links for your convenience. I would recommend finding it at your local library and supporting them!
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
This does sound like an exceptionally powerful read, Kriti. I hope to get to it at some point. Great post. 🙂
Thanks, Stephen! I hope it is a good read for you. Happy to chat with you about it when you read it. 🙂