Educated By Tara Westover Book Review — Shola Olatunde
I haven’t read many books in my lifetime, but this non-fiction by Tara Westover is mind boggling for me, mostly for the fact that it is a true life story. It is one thing not to get western education from the early stages of one’s life, but not entering a classroom until 17 and still Acing courses through school is genius. It explains that impossibility is nothing if we are totally dedicated to achieving something.
The book shows just how much we can let the opinion of others shape our lives, or how much influence we can let other people have over our lives if we give them the power. It is evident in the book with Tara’s relationship with her ‘out of control’ brother, Shawn, who keeps her in a state of constant fear, and the whole family under the influence of their father of whom they are ignorant of his psychological condition.
Tara is a wild girl from a wild countryside, she decided to reject the mundane and damn the words of her father who keeps talking about how evil the government is, the end of the world, and doesn't register any of his family in the system or travel overseas. Tara, the 7th child of the seven children of the Westover, and two of her brothers were the only ones who left the countryside to get a formal education, and all three of them ended up with P.hds. I will go on to say that in each family, there is something that tries to hold us back and somehow influences our lives, but we must persist to break the hold if it does not allow progress. Tara broke through the conspiracies her father had led her to strongly believe about the world through what she studied in college, which made her see the world in a whole new light. She not only read it in books, she experienced some historical places during her travel overseas.
Education is important. The journey through this book to me reveals that education is a process of enlightenment, liberation, self-discovery and a process of continuous reprogramming.
This is a great book and I believe everyone will enjoy reading it.
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