Educated: A memoir

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover               Audio Book:  12 hours     Paperback Book: 512 pages                    

Tara Westover has led a surprisingly dysfunctional existence.     Living isolated on her family’s compound I first thought there was going to be something nefarious about sister-wives and gun hoarding instead, while the topic of sister-wives is addressed it did not take place within Tara’s immediate family.    Though it was condoned within sects of their Mormon faith.     In Tara’s home, her father was a screamer, moody, hysterically violent at times and so was one of her brothers.    Each could flip in an instant from calmly chatting to her father forcing her to load scrap metal into a new contraption he had come up with to cut the metal up.  Unfortunately one of her brothers nearly lost his arm trying to use it and when none of the other brothers wanted to go next her father made her pick up scrap and load it into the machine.    She was nearly hurt several times but diligently obeyed her father.    Her Dad does not believe in the government nor doctors so any time someone in the family was hurt, sick or needed medical care of any kind – her father expected her mother to take care of it.    Her mother self-taught herself to deliver babies, sew incisions and cure with poultices, tinctures and oils.   She learned plant lore and which botanicals were good for what and became quite savvy at natural healing.    She had friends that did energy and chakra work and eventually people came to her wanting to buy her medicinal herbal cures.   So much so that she has a thriving business selling them now internationally.  The kids did not go to school, again her father’s idea since he believes public schools teach nothing but propaganda and control the populace by controlling their minds through what they teach.   He saw government conspiracy in most everything so he and her mother built a bomb shelter and keep it stocked with a year’s worth of supplies for everyone in the family.   They believe a mix of the Book of Mormon and the Bible so they are preparing for the End of Days as foretold in the Bible but also adhere to the writings of  the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr.    Tara’s parents also excused the behavior of her mentally deranged brother believing that whatever he did to her (shoving her head in the toilet was his favorite move, beating her senseless, breaking her bones – pushing her fingers, wrists, etc. the wrong way until they snapped) she deserved.    They never corrected him for the awful things he did, but, they would mistreat her for being headstrong and agreeing with her brother for what he did to her.     Finally, she decided that she wanted to go to school and managed to work it out between her parents, though they fought her tooth and nail on it and others in family services positions, etc. helping her out of the compound.     Much happens along the way and it is certainly a miracle how many things fell into place and how many people were networked to help her along her path.   Having been in that environment so long she is noticeably a bit damaged in her perspective (when witnesses in town would see her brother abusing her and physically hurting her seriously, she would laugh it off like it was all in fun – Why?   The guy is a lunatic and needs to be put away.   But she always held up for him to outsiders and had long ago given up trying to defend herself against him nor try to get sympathy from others in the family.   The brief time she received empathy from her sister – it didn’t last long and now her sister sides with the family against her.    She didn’t really see how outsiders, (people living in town) saw the Westover family until she made a few friends at school and later acquired a semi boyfriend who, after witnessing one of her brother’s rages against her first hand while the family went on about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place, then Tara herself, though hand prints shown red on her throat and her face was swelling and bruising, her boyfriend refused to ever enter their home again, because Tara played it off even then as though it was all fun and games and she was o.k. though she likely had a concussion.    What a family of enablers to an abuser, yikes!    Tara, while adapting to life in school, she was shunned by some because she really didn’t have a clue as to how to behave in class and was so at sea with the most simple of classes, she basically had to be taught how to behave and how to seek help with catching up on all the topics she didn’t know that she didn’t know, like when she asked in class what the word “holocaust” meant as she had never seen nor heard about it.      She made a phenomenal come back, catching up by reading up on history, working with math tutors, etc.    She ends up attending, Brigham Young University, where she receives a B.A.,  She received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship,    She attended Trinity College, Cambridge where she earned a MPhil and the next year was a visiting fellow at Harvard University!  She returned to Cambridge where she earned a PhD in history.    Amazing!   From such a rough start, with little or no schooling this lady went on to earn degrees at some of the most prodigious universities there are.     It is a worthy read to see how it all took place.    Props to Tara.   Divine providence and self- determination seem to have led this young lady out of the darkness into the light.   Good book, though hard to read at times when she is being brutalized and ostracized.