Educated by Tara Westover Published by Random House Publishing Group on February 20, 2018
Genres: Biography & Autobiography / Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography / Religious, Biography & Autobiography / Women
Pages: 352
Format: Audiobook
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
“Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her 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. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
“Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, Newsday, New York Post, theSkimm, Refinery29, Bloomberg, Self, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Paste, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, LibraryReads, Book Riot, Pamela Paul, KQED, New York Public Library
I’ve read a lot of memoirs (or listened mostly if I’m being honest) lately. Memoirs of religious fundamentalism, Holocaust survivors, even just crazy situations (looking at you Gypsy Rose). They don’t get easier to write reviews, unless I have a strong reaction to the words used, the point of view shared, and Tara Westover’s story falls deeply into the hard-to-review. Educated is tough to review because it’s more than just a story of survival and escape. She makes it clear from the very beginning this isn’t a story about fundamentalist religion. While yes, she was raised Mormon, this story is not so much about being Mormon but about being a survivor. I’ll explain, I hope!
Ruby Ridge. If you have never heard of it, please Google it. 1992, Idaho, and a story that was twisted by Tara’s survivalist father (and mother, but Daddy did all the twisting in this story). This is the type of family that Tara grew up in. Seperate from the world, always preparing for the apocalypse. No formal education; church, yes, always, but everyone in the family knew the church was also too mainstream, gentile even. When Tara was older and wanted a birth certificate so she could get a driver’s license, no one could even say for sure when she was born. This was not a Ruby Ridge family per se, but it was a family that was convinced that the government was coming for them, like it had the Weaver family. Yet another reason to stay separate. This is also a family riddled with mental illness, the most accident-prone family I’ve read about ever, and a family that is so tightly controlled that even when Tara spread her wings, she still doubted her own self and even her own memories.
What I left this book with is more than being educated, but in actual learning. You don’t have to grow up fundamentalist, survivalist, separatist, or any other crazy situation that is outside what is the norm. At some point, to truly grow up, you question your life. You learn to trust yourself, you learn to trust your memories, or at least examine them in new light to find a central truth to who you are. Tara went out with nothing in her pocket for learning and managed to travel Europe, attend prestigious schools, and still doubted her experiences, memories, and worth. From a family that never prioritized the individual, but the doctrine that the dad made up as he went. A family that did not protect its own children from the abuses within the family. We all have to go through that growing and learning ourselves, but many of us have it easier than Tara. I learned in Educated. I learned the struggle to protect yourself, I learned the struggle to prioritize yourself, and in hindsight, I saw my own Educated experiences. Not from any of the things this author endured and learned from, as I am grateful that I never had that experience, but I learned. Even in my advancing years, I found nuggets of my own journey to who I am, who I want to leave behind, and the hard cuts that sometimes need to be made to save yourself from the past.
About Tara Westover
Below is a bio, awkwardly written in the third person. Because people keep asking me for it.
Tara Westover is an American historian and memoirist. Her first book, Educated, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list, in hardcover, for more than two years. A memoir of her upbringing in rural Idaho, the book was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. To date it has been translated into 49 languages. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year. In 2019, Time Magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People. Westover holds a PhD in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University. In 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.
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