Educated

 

Title: EducatedAuthor: Tara WestoverPublished: 2018Genre: MemoirRating: 3 out of 5Date Started: 16 June 2020Date Finished: 20 June 2020

My interest in this book is:

After reading the great reviews and ratings on Goodreads, I thought I would pick it up. Secondly, the struggle the author went through to make her life from not going to school to getting a Ph.D. in Cambridge was the key point in my attracting my attention. I love to read about women who come out shining from the hard situations they are in and I thought this memoir was one of them.

Ideas Expressed/Message/Plot:

The story is about Tara, who is born in Idaho, into a Mormon family, who never went to formal schooling. Tara's father thinks that the schools and the government are brainwashing children into socialism and that the doctors are evil. Tara and her siblings never saw a doctor or nurse and the cure for every illness was their mother's oils, which she prepared at home.

Lacking formal education, Tara began to educate herself and taught herself enough to get into BYU. From there with the help of a professor, she got into Cambridge, qualified for Gates Scholarship pursued her Ph.D. The book is about her struggles as a child and as an adult with a dysfunctional and manipulative family and how her father controlled everyone with his bipolar disorder and manipulative nature.

Favorite Characters:

I liked the character of her paternal grandmother, who was encouraging her to study and get ahead in life.

When I finished this book, I felt:

I never understood the hype! After reading about 120 pages, I wish the book was way longer than it needed to be. There was no necessity for the author to list every childhood incident in that detail. It was more about her father and family than what she actually felt. The mother and her maternal grandparents sounded like they were formally educated and how no one saw any of the kids not being educated baffled me.

There was abuse in all areas - no school, no doctor visits, burn accident of her younger brother, and the abuse by one of her older brothers Shawn! She has listed that on four different occasions she was severely abused and refers that her sister was too. Why no one contacted the authorities was beyond my thought process. She says they were poor and yet had a computer! I was expecting the book to be something similar to 'Stolen Innocence', where the author gives the practical picture of her life before and after.

I also did not understand how Tara got so much money to travel back and forth from the UK while being a student. She says she studied at BYU without help from anyone. I am not sure how she managed the money till the Bishop helped her. College isn't cheap and neither are textbooks. In the end, the whole survivalist attitude made me feel like 'I am not really sure if she is' thought!

Favorite lines from the book:

• While my father and brother shouted, ignorance kept me silent; I couldn't defend myself because I didn't understand the accusation.

• It's strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.

• Stuart Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved, and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities for aspirations.

• When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?