REVIEW: Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Jackie Kennedy, 1960 by Edward Clark

We had our first bookclub meeting after the summer holiday, a few days ago, at last. We usually meet at a cafe, but one of the members was kind enough to host the meeting at her house this time.

The book we discussed was “Educated”. It’s a memoir by Tara Westover and it is the first book she has written, which was released earlier this year.

The title sounded very appealing to me and although I was reading another book at the time, it was all I was thinking about. I knew there would be a miraculous journey to enlightnment.

 

Synopsis:
Tara Westover was born into a Mormon survivalist family in Idaho on September 1986. She was homeschooled along with her six siblings because their parents believed that schools would brainwash them into taking the path of Satan.

Homeschooling was basically each member picking a book on a subject of their choice and reading it on their own. There was not much supervision because education wasn’t an important aspect of mental development according to their beliefs, so the children worked for their father, in their junkyard instead.

Having limited knowledge about the people and world beyond their house, only raised the children’s curiosity and eventually caused them to rebel. One by one, they were leaving their world and just as their schooling was, they had to depend on their own in order to help themselves.

Some made it through and others found their way back. Tara was amongst those who had left and through this memoir we learn of her family bond and how education had broken it.

While I usually love memoirs, this one did not do it for me. The reason might be because I read it after The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, so I felt it was just another copycat.

Tara seemed to have lived a very traumatic childhood. She had a careless father and a psychotic older brother who abused her. And although the family only had each other, it seemed a lot safer for her to be around strangers than with them because there was no one there to protect her, not even her mother who had witnessed most of the abuse.

I know it said "memoir" and I'm sure most of the things were true, but somehow I got this feeling like I was reading fiction and not because the things that happened were fantastic but because the way she said them felt unrealistic, like she tried to over-dramatise some aspects of her life.

Her excessive use of new age terminology like Illuminati or Bipolar was another reason I felt made her story unrealistic. It felt like she was using words that are most popular these days. Every celebrity seems to be bipolar and all the rich and famous are associated with the Illuminati, so obviously people would be curious enough to see what she has to say about them.
She also tried too hard to associate herself with other cultures, with blacks, muslims and Jews, only to attract a multicultural audience. That way everbody sides with her and most importantly, against her family.

I have nothing against her, and these are just my assumptions, but by trying to please readers I felt she was being fake.

I watched one of her interviews on YouTube - I think it was with CBS or PBS or something - and the interviewer asked her if she had gone for any therapy and she said she had, just as the book was being published. This was to let her cope with the response after the book is published (or something along those lines). Then the interviewer said that he would've thought she would have needed therapy for all the things she had gone through more than this, then she changed and said oh I did get help before. From that I felt just as I felt reading her book...I'm sorry to say, a fake. She actually sounded like a politician.

Other than not being able to swallow her story, I was a bit irritated at her for constantly stating the obvious. For instance, through her stories about her father's carelessness towards his children, we can conclude that he was bad at parenting but she still said it, plain and clear, incase we didn't notice. And at the very end, she reminded us that the three people who got PhDs were independent and the ones who didn't seek an education were dependent on their parents:

"My family was splitting down the middle the three who left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates and the four without high school diplomas"

Chapter 39, Page 374

What I sensed from that sentence, eventhough she probably said it to show the ever growing gap between their viewpoints, was a little arrogance or as her father would put it, she seemed uppity.

Another thing I did not like was that, she diagnosed her father. She was not studying medicine and she did not examine him, so why would she associate him with any disorder.

I usually enjoy researching and medicine is obviously not my profession but from what I could sum up about Bipolar disorder is that it is just a name for mood swings. It is triggered by environmental factors. It is not necessarily associated with genetics. It can be caused by hormonal imbalance or altered health habits. Basically it is a type of depression that comes and goes.

This reminded me of Mr Deeds Goes To Town, 1936, When the psychiatrist tried to explain manic depression - which is another term for bipolar - and it was hilarious. I haven't watched this film in a very long time, so I cannot remember the exact words but I'll probably post about it some other time.

I don't know anyone who doesn't feel sometimes some form of depression, even if nothing's wrong with their lives, unless they're extremely healthy, physically and spirtually. Nowadays you don't know what chemicals they add to food, even if it says organic, so obviously it's going to mess with our systerm. Just because we are told this and that are medical terms for this and the other, it doesn't mean it's a disease. Tomorrow they'll make up a disease for sneezing in a certain way.

I know that when I'm eating right and take care of my self while doing my best to get closer to God, any depressive feelings go away even when everything seems dark around me. Actually, when I do get closer to God, everything clears up.

Anyway I seem to have digressed a little. Let us go back to our subject.

The father was just careless and selfish. He wanted his children to need him so he kept them away from education. Yes maybe he was also scared that they could be manipulated by the government, but as his children grew older, he changed and all of a sudden, he just wanted them to stay with him. He knew he was a bad father and so he thought that the only way his family would want to communicate with him, was if they needed him. It was his selfish personality and not a disorder.

Most all parents are selfish in one way or another, but love usually stops a parent from crossing the line. It's like a parent trying their hardest to delay the day their child goes to university or gets married because they're more attached to them than their children maybe of them, but eventually let go for the betterment of their child.

In this case, the father wanted to delay by asking them to work when they could study because he wanted them to stay longer. I think the disobedience of one child after the other was what set him off though. He wasn't a conventional father by any means, but he would've probably been a more understanding father had they all shown a little respect.

Paranoia is not something uncommon and the reason is the world has changed a lot. In a bad way. It might seem harsh to keep children locked from the world but it probably was done out of love no matter how cruel it looks to us.

I will not go into character detail or points in the story as I usually would have, because when I don't really like a book, I don't bother studying it. I don't feel there was much to learn from it anyway, except perhaps that education is liberating. Still, I loved that the book was fast-paced and very easy to read. It wasn't boring and went straight to the point. I just didn't fully accept it.

I did love the beginning when she described the mountain and field like dancers, her house like creepy shadows and education like a fast school bus passing by and wouldn't stop for anyone. It was a beautiful metaphor and actually a great synopsis to her story.

The ending when she said she called her transformation; education, it was very fitting.

"...They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.

You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.

I call it an education."

Chapter 40, Page 377

Another thing I enjoyed was that the family joked about their sorrows and actually moved on, not dreading huge accidents that may have altered their lives.
I laughed so hard when she described her brother Luke after his accident:

"He looked somewhere between homeless and on vacation"

Chapter 7, Page 84

Oh and I loved it when she kept mentioning The Honeymooners. It is one of the best classic shows and I really felt nostalgic everytime she talked about it.

I don't know if I should recommend it or not. For me it didn't feel like a waste of time but it wasn't enlightening either, so I'll leave it up to you.