Educated

Introduction

Educated, written by Tara Westover, was published on February 18th, 2018, by Random House Books. I was originally going to review this book in August, but once I decided to review it this year, I knew it had to be for Women’s Month. I was first introduced to this book at the very end of 2021 when it was assigned for my AP Language and Composition course, and this was my first time rereading it since then. It was fun getting to look back through my old annotations, and it was very insightful. This book is phenomenal, one of the best and most interesting autobiographies I’ve ever read, and if you haven’t read it yet, I strongly recommend getting yourself a copy before continuing with this review. The Plot section will remain spoiler-free, but my Thoughts section will not be. One more note, given that this is a review of a nonfiction book, this is structured differently this time. It may read somewhere between a review and a report, so if that isn’t for you, I understand if you skip this one. However, I do feel that this book is genuinely fantastic - one of the best so far this year - so I do encourage you to read at least the book if not my review of it.

If you want to learn more about Tara Westover - which I would also recommend, as she is a remarkable woman - you can visit her website, tarawestover.com, or follow her on social media.

Twitter: @tarawestover

Facebook: Facebook.com/TaraWestoverLit

Apologies again for the late post, my classes are gearing up for finals week, so I have been very busy, and I honestly found this book difficult to review (see the second paragraph of the section containing my thoughts). I am taking this week off to get caught up and to allow for cushion time for the next few reviews. I will be completing a short series to finish out April, so be on the lookout for that in two weeks. Thank you all for being so patient!

Plot

Educated is a first-person autobiography written by Tara Westover. It details her childhood in Idaho and what it was like for her to grow up in a radically Mormon home. She also explains how she got an education while living in a home with parents who rejected every government-controlled facet of modern living.

Thoughts

I want to address the obvious first: her parents had very radical beliefs. Before rereading this book, I reached out to my former AP Lang teacher for advice or recommendations, and she reminded me that yes, her parents’ radical philosophies absolutely should be acknowledged, but their effect on Westover and her perspective also plays a key role in how she lived her life and tells her story. There are very notable points in the book where Westover recognizes that her view of the world is tinted by her parent’s ideals. I don’t want to delve deeply into religion here because this is not a space for judgment; however, religion is such a key part of Westover's entire life, and it would do her a disservice to ignore it entirely.

This book is incredibly hard for me to review, which is why this is coming out so many days later than I anticipated. I finished this book last weekend, but I have been delaying this review in part because I’ve been busy, but also because I had no idea where to start. It’s so much more difficult because while I can go over writing style and - to some degree - themes, it’s not as though I can critique the plot. This is the story of Westover’s life, the “plot” is nonfiction, and this all really happened, so what is there to critique? This is another reason I find it hard to insert my opinions; the last thing I want to do is judge somebody else for their lifestyle or life experiences, and I feel that by inserting my opinions - as I usually would for a fiction work - I would be doing just that. So, I think for the sake of this review, I am going to focus on the themes present throughout Educated, the writing style Westover uses to tell her story, and some of the sections I found to be the most impactful and inspiring to me.

I want to start briefly with my thoughts on her writing style. In short, it was fantastic. She was incredibly descriptive, using enough words to beautifully paint pictures of people, places, emotions, and memories without it ever feeling long-winded. She also made sure to note where her recollection disagreed with others’, and the inherent imperfection of her own memory - especially in regard to traumatic events throughout her life - reminded me this is a nonfiction work when it began to feel unbelievable.

Something I continuously made note of in my personal annotations - which were incredibly interesting to reread on their own - was of turning points in Westover’s life along with every time she made a major deviation from her father’s ideas. A major one - maybe the most important one - was seeing her brother, Tyler, tutor himself into college and plant the seeds of independence and education into her mind. Others include her own decision to leave the Mountain, her first use of modern medicine, her choosing to pursue education in a traditionally male-dominated field, and her beginning to question certain aspects of the Mormon faith, such as polygamy. The more she defied her father, the further she took herself from the Mountain.

Something else I noticed was that until she firmly decided she would never work for or be financially dependent on her father again, every time she returned home, she fell into an old way of thinking and acting. Though she was more educated at this point, something about that place made her feel sixteen again, like the girl she saw looking at her in the mirror as she grew up in that home. The interesting thing is, her parents taught her to be self-reliant, but her father wanted her to be a certain kind of self-sufficient. The instinct ingrained into her kept her alive on the Mountain, but it was almost self destructive when she went to college. She refused help from anyone and everyone - especially the government - until she literally couldn’t anymore. Her parents prepared their children for a life of obedience at home or nearby, not for one outside the Princess’ shadow.

I find it poetic that she was raised to believe the way her parents did so strongly that it was hard for her to feel comfortable at college, but what she ended up being most drawn to was an objective study of the Mormon faith. She wanted to write history for herself through a completely objective lens, not through one her father handed to her. Her education - among other choices she made in regard to her brother, Shawn - ultimately cost her some of her family, but she does still have solid relationships with many of them and has become quite successful. She is a truly inspiring individual.

I’m not quite sure how to describe how I felt after finishing this book. Usually when I finish a particularly good read, I feel almost hollow, like I miss it. I felt similarly this time around, but something was different. I think the knowledge that all of this was real - I wasn’t reading a fiction about a made-up somebody’s life - changed the way I read and interpreted the book. I have to give this one a 10/10, and not because it’s a true story, but because it was a great one. A fantastic and almost unbelievable story brilliantly told by an incredibly intelligent and accomplished woman. I know I’ve said it a few times by now, but please read this book if you are at all interested, I am not exaggerating how phenomenal it is. With that, I leave you until next weekend with a new series to prepare us for summer.