Educated By Tara Westover Book Review — Faith Ihegihu
AUTHOR: TARA WESTOVER
GENRE: MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
Educated covers the life of the author from childhood to her adult years. The book holds so much emotion from love to hate, and pain to fulfillment.
It highlighted the impact of family and religion in the life the author. I would say reading this book ravaged my mind. Off course a memoir would cover her life from childhood to her present day, off course it would show emotion but this is a unique telling, a different story.
I had heard about Mormonism, I had never really thought about it though. Educated told the experiences of a child who grew in that religion and how that religion and the place of family molded her perspectives and aspirations.
This book made me felt many things and think so many thoughts. Where does love for family end? Where does love for self begin? Does love for family have to end for love for self to begin? Where is the line between religion and rationality?
Maybe this is not a very new story line, but it is told a different way. This is not a story about self; it is about family, the struggle for enlightenment and for new things.
Tara’s story is important because it is the story of an insider who is now an outsider, it highlights how fickle the mind is and how belief shapes us knowingly or unknowingly. It shows just how much our perspective determines our choices or whether they even give us choices at all.
Something that really speaks to me is the strength, the strength in their belief and the strength in their bodies. They held on even against their sanity, they suffered and never questioned themselves. They had every chance to change their story, to pack up and go. But they stubbornly held on, if it wasn't so rash a decision, it would almost be noble.
Her mother stands out to me; I watched out for her character the most. She told her own stories, she was strong too. It shows again just how much belief matters, how much and how important it was that a mother could offer love wrapped in denial in all confidence.
Tara changed the story, she became “abnormal” for a chance at “normal”, it was against everything she knew and she did it anyway in the midst of abuse and a love that would not love correctly. And painfully so because they could and should have.
Educated is a wonderful read and a strong story that tells so much more than I could possibly pen down- a great book indeed.
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