As an avid memoir reader and lover, I can confidently say that Dr. Tara Westover’s “Educated” shook me to my core.
The story is set in rural Idaho and portrays a survivalist, doomsday-prepping family. It’s written by the youngest child, Tara, and follows her journey all the way through her doctorate.
At points, I couldn’t believe the story was true. It seemed more to me like a psychological thriller than a memoir, unfortunately for Tara.
The book is extremely unsettling at times, which forces the reader to understand the danger and gravity of the real-life situation. As much as I hate this, I love it, because that’s what makes a good memoir!
We begin in Tara’s childhood, where her family lives completely off the grid on Buck’s Peak in Idaho. They live up on the mountain, and the children receive no formal schooling apart from their mother’s “homeschooling”, which ends as soon as their father needs work done around the farm.
Their father owns a junkyard, where all seven children work as soon as they’re old enough. Their mother is a midwife, despite her original wishes. She begins midwifery out of necessity for money and hates it at first — she only comes to enjoy it later on.
One of the most key components of “Educated” is the religious psychosis and paranoia the father experiences. The only time the children leave the mountain in their childhood is to attend their Mormon church.
The father distrusts the government and becomes obsessed with the idea of defying it. No member of the family has ever seen a doctor, nor do they have birth certificates until well into their childhoods — Tara didn’t receive one until she was nine.
This leads to multiple accidents at the junkyard that their mother heals with only her tinctures, which ultimately cause avoidable infections and loss of extremities.
Another key issue in the book that spoke to me specifically is purity. At one point, Tara says, “I evolved a new understanding of the word whore, one that was less about actions, and more about essence. It was not that I had done something wrong, so much as that I existed in the wrong way.”
This captures the heart of what she’s trying to say with this book — her family’s belief system caused her to think that something was wrong with her entire existence. This is so incredibly dangerous and creates so much control over her that it’s nearly impossible to escape.
Westover is so frank about this, which truly shows the reader what it took for her to leave. She decided to leave home and go to Brigham Young University, which, while still Mormon, is an insane culture shock.
She goes on to attend Cambridge and Harvard, which her father objects to. She goes anyway, showing her ability to break free from her childhood.
Westover perfectly conveys the cyclical feeling of freedom and guilt. She writes in a way that makes me feel her feelings and absolutely activates my empathy muscle.
I felt the book was absolutely fantastic; however, I wouldn’t recommend it to any young audience. It’s very heavy and does use some offensive language. I felt this was necessary to the story, but it could be disturbing to some, especially if they’re unprepared for it.
The story gives a full picture of Westover’s life and what she went through. It can serve as a reminder that education isn’t something to be taken for granted, and that we have to continue to check our critical thinking.
Do we believe what we do because we were raised to or because we’ve thought it through and drawn our own conclusions?
Abdullah Farooqui 
Carlie Smith