Genre: Memoir
Published: February 20, 2018 by Random House
Pages: 352
Rating: 5/5 stars
CW: graphic depictions of physical and emotional abuse
Educated is a memoir depicting Westover's childhood growing up in an ultra-religious Mormon family. Due to her parents' conservative beliefs, Tara and her siblings grew up sheltered from contemporary society. They were forbidden to listen to secular music, watch tv, and were heavily surveilled by their parents. But most importantly, they were forbidden from attending school. As such, Tara grew up with curiosity for what existed beyond her upbringing, and this curiosity eventually led to her taking an interest in getting an education. Educated follows the emotional and physical difficulties that Tara endured in trying to pursue her education while the people around her who were supposed to protect her failed her the most.
I read this book fairly recently, just towards the end of 2023. Normally it takes me months to review books, but given that I don't know how regular my blog schedule will be, I just needed to get this review out into the word. This book is not an easy read. It is emotionally gripping, at times frustrating, and incredibly heartbreaking. There are also some graphic images in this text, so people should approach it carefully. But it is also so moving. As a student myself, who has had the privilege to learn so many things into my 20's, I admired Tara's drive to keep learning even when the odds were stacked against her. Educated therefore contextualizes years of yearning for an education that eventually accumulates into success despite many tragic difficulties.
This book does a great job at contending with the many different facets of trauma. Since Tara endured so many layers of abuse throughout her childhood and young adulthood, she takes great care in explaining how these traumas affected her memory. There are many points throughout the book in which she admits that the memory she has around certain events are fuzzy. Sometimes she will recount her memory of an event, and then go on to recount a completely different version of that event based on how one of her siblings remembered it. I thought this was a very considerate way of writing because she takes into consideration how at times, she is not *really* a reliable narrator because of her memory loss. But being an unreliable narrator is not a bad thing, it just shows that she is careful not to accept one universal truth. She takes care to accept multiple truths based on how her trauma has contextualized those truths. If anything, Tara's willingness to accept memory loss as a part of her narrative made me more trusting of her as a storyteller.
Since Tara's book deals with multiple people, some who had positive and some who had very negative impacts on her life, she also does a good job at protecting the confidentiality of her subjects and of herself. Tara is not the only victim of abuse in the text, as her siblings also encountered various levels of manipulation and trauma. As such, Tara makes it clear at the beginning of the text that some names are pseudonyms. I thought this detail made for a very ethical piece of non-fiction writing. Sometimes in memoirs you get writers who like to air out other people's trauma despite those people not consenting for them to do so. This detail showed me that Tara is conscious about how some people may receive her story and she protects herself from blame in how she portrays certain events.
I thought the text was very well organized in its portrayal of how Tara achieved her education. We follow her from a young girl, and then into her teens, and then young adult years. Sometimes she does go back in time to connect something happening in the future to something that happened in the past. But she does so in a way that is easy to follow. I really was impacted by the natural gift that Tara had for learning, that was just not put to use as a child. I couldn't imagine the childhood she could have had if she had been given the resources to thrive. She is definitely one of those naturally intelligent people, and it was wonderful to watch her come into her own as the story transpired.
Overall, I was touched by the ways that Tara was able to thrive in the educational system once she unlearned her parents' abusive ways. This book does well at unpacking how trauma can affect the mind and body to not perform at its fullest potential, and I am so happy that Tara was able to get the education she truly deserved. This book did make me sad at times thinking about the fact that there are children in similar situations, and I think this text drives a great sentiment that education is not a weapon, it is a tool for change. If you like memoirs, please read this!
Have you read Educated? What did you think?
Emily @ Paperback Princess
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