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A review by reneedecoskey
Educated by Tara Westover
5.0
Not sure what took me so long to get around to actually reading this book, but I flew through it somewhere between "WTF?!?" and "Oh God, please don't let anyone be dead." Tara Westover grew up in Idaho, homeschooled but not really, in a family where her father was so religious that he was even radical for his church. He was a doomsday prepper, hoarding supplies for when his family would be the only one to survive the end of the world (on Y2K, naturally). The kids worked on various jobs with him that he did to make money, and in his attempts to cut corners to produce more work, he often let safety slide by. There are some seriously gruesome injuries in this book, and it's hard to believe anyone survived some of them.
As Tara grew older and began to see how some of her older brothers were leaving -- including one who studied independently for the test to apply for college (and was accepted), she started thinking about her own future. Things at home were concerning, not just from her father, but from her older brother Shawn, and her mother was turning a blind eye. So Tara started studying. She took the test and then she took it again. And then she got accepted to BYU.
Which is how it came to be that Tara Westover never stepped foot in a classroom until she was 17 years old.
She had a rough go of it, trying to navigate an education, especially when she didn't know or recognize many of the things her teachers and classmates referenced -- such as the Holocaust -- which made her appear ignorant, insensitive, etc. She learned lessons about how closely linked education and money are, and where she fell on that line of privilege (low, until she finally agreed to receive assistance).
Still, she worked hard and a professor saw something in her. She got a grant to study at Cambridge. She studied at Harvard. She studied with some of the best and brightest. But at what cost?
As I read this, I couldn't help but think back to The Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez if only for the shared themes of how pursuing an education can separate you from a family who doesn't share that experience. You can trade one shared experience with one group of people for a different shared experience with another group of people. In other words: education can be a lonely place when you're striking out on your own for it.
As Tara grew older and began to see how some of her older brothers were leaving -- including one who studied independently for the test to apply for college (and was accepted), she started thinking about her own future. Things at home were concerning, not just from her father, but from her older brother Shawn, and her mother was turning a blind eye. So Tara started studying. She took the test and then she took it again. And then she got accepted to BYU.
Which is how it came to be that Tara Westover never stepped foot in a classroom until she was 17 years old.
She had a rough go of it, trying to navigate an education, especially when she didn't know or recognize many of the things her teachers and classmates referenced -- such as the Holocaust -- which made her appear ignorant, insensitive, etc. She learned lessons about how closely linked education and money are, and where she fell on that line of privilege (low, until she finally agreed to receive assistance).
Still, she worked hard and a professor saw something in her. She got a grant to study at Cambridge. She studied at Harvard. She studied with some of the best and brightest. But at what cost?
As I read this, I couldn't help but think back to The Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez if only for the shared themes of how pursuing an education can separate you from a family who doesn't share that experience. You can trade one shared experience with one group of people for a different shared experience with another group of people. In other words: education can be a lonely place when you're striking out on your own for it.