Hello,
Today I want to share my thoughts on Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover. I have been seeing this book everywhere for the past few months and as I am obsessed with autobiographies, I immediately thought it deserved a read. It has been on my reading list for a while yet I have been delaying in reading it, probably because I haven’t heard of Tara before the release of this book (I guess no one had). Incidentally, Educated caught my whole attention last week when I came across an interview of Tara on Ellen’s show. She was explaining how she got a PHD from Cambridge without having any basic education. She attended neither primary school nor high school. Her first time to sit in a classroom was in college at the age of seventeen. How can this be possible? I wondered. This increased my curiosity and I read her memoir finally. The book follows Tara Westover’s journey of transformation from an ignorant mountain girl to Dr Westover. Tara was born and raised in Idaho (a state in the US known for mountainous landscape). She was the last born of seven children. Her parents were survivalists and very convinced Mormons (a type of religion known to be political and social conservative). They don’t believe in public education or hospitals which means Tara and her siblings didn’t go to school and never saw a doctor. His father had decided that they would be home-schooled but they only learned a few things such as reading and writing. Instead of going to school, Tara helped her mother who was an illegal midwife and a healer, in winter she salvaged mental in his father’s junkyard. There were no books available for her to read except the bible, books of Mormons and a kid science book. One of her brothers, Tylor studied independently and took an AST exam (I supposed this is their version of Candidat libre). He passed the test and got admitted to university. At the age of sixteen, Tara did the same and got an admission to Brigham young university. She went to college with the intention of studying music, her love for music is the main reason that made her want to enter the larger world. Once at BYU, Tara figured out how ignorant she is. For eg she was surprised to find out that Europe is a continent and not a country. She just realized that the only reality she has been exposed to is her father’s philosophies which were fundamentally momerism. This made her so eager to learn, she has kept pushing against all odds until she gets a PHD in History from Cambridge university. It has not been an easy journey between finding her place in a new world, struggling financially and also her family who was not supportive. Education changed her; she was no more a naïve child who believed everything her father said. Education empowered her and made her confident enough to confront her parents about things she has been uncomfortable with since her childhood, mainly his Brother Sean who has been abusive to her. Even then Sean was still abusive to his wife. When Tara told her family that Sean might be sick and need help, his father didn’t take it well, he never believed her and this brought an end to Tara’s relationship with her family. However His brother, Taylor who inspired her to go to college still is a huge support to her. In a few words, Tara Westover’s Memoir shows the importance of education. Going to school does not only improve knowledge, it also allows people to discover themselves through learning, to be exposed to many realities so they can deliberately choose their own path to follow. It also shows how parents can be manipulative towards their children. When we are born, we grow up believing in what our parents believe and doing whatever they say is right. As we grow, we discover that this world is full of so many options and when it comes to beliefs, there are even more diversities, everyone believes in whatever makes her/him feel as a better person. I think the mistake that most parents make is to not allow their children explore diversities in order to discover the realities that suit them better because we don’t necessarily belong to our parents’ choices. This book is remarkable, very well written, I liked how she admits her uncertainty on some memories and she added footnotes of the memory told from someone else’s perspective. I highly recommend EDUCATED to anyone who wants to read an interesting memoir.
2 Comments
A
7/27/2020 13:25:09
🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰👌👌👍
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Lys
7/27/2020 18:30:38
Great job dear.
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Who's behind the blogHello I am Denyse INEZA
My blog's name "ishyapluma" is made of two words ishya and pluma. Ishya from my mother tongue(kinyarwanda)means prosperity and pluma is a Spanish word for pen. Being very introverted, I started blogging because I was so inside my head and I needed a way to get out of it. later on it became a way of reaching out to my audience. I now write to influence, to inspire and to give hope for a prosperous future to me as well as to everyone reading this blog. I write to heal. Welcome to Ishyapluma! Contact: +250784266072 Archives
June 2021
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