Tara Westover’s Educated was released in 2018 and topped the charts for a long time that year. The book even enjoys a solid rating of 4.5/5 on Goodreads.

 

Educated is a memoir about a girl born and raised in a fundamentalist Mormon household in Idaho.

 

Her father believes that doomsday is arriving and arriving fast.

 

He pushes his family to prepare for it. He doesn’t believe in any of the machinations of the federal government and steers clear of all of them that might make them one of ‘them’. There’s a clear ‘Them’ versus ‘Us ‘in his mind that manifests its way into his family’s life and his choices for them.

 

The author is very as-a-matter-of-fact about her story telling. She asks her readers to also adopt that mindset and to not judge either their way of life or her family members for the way they are. I’m happy she did this, which otherwise is not easy to do if you haven’t personally faced or dealt with fundamentalism, of any sort, yourself.

 

Tara talks about how she’d never set foot in class until she was 17 and from there on, how she went on to earn her doctorate from Cambridge. Born as the last of seven children, she’s subjected to laboring in the farm, the house, the junkyard and faces multiple injuries. Her father and brother decide what’s appropriate for a girl to do and what’s not. She recalls both happy memories and gruesome moments -- such as being bashed by her brother -- in graphic detail. In places, I often found myself questioning the role of her mother who seems to be in the scene but is apparently helpless.  

 

Hailing from India, I see many parallels to her story from similar fundamentalist or even plain conservative groups at home. The word fundamentalist should nail it for us. It is always us or them in their story…if they were pro-choice, they never are fundamentalist in the first place, are they? I don’t question the story that’s already been told. My heart yearns for those millions of stories that are yet to be told on this side of the world. For some reason, I’m both scared and excited at the possibility of such a story seeing the light of the day. More scared, because we may just not be ready to face it.

 

The book has 3 parts and the biggest one of them is part one – her childhood until the time she gets out of the house to go to BYU. Parts 2 and 3 are, in comparison, a bit shorter. She describes her culture shock and the troubles she had to go through to fit in.

 

However, I greatly missed the narrative style of part one in the subsequent parts.

 

I loved and was moved by the bits where she struggles to make peace, or forge relationship, with whatever’s left of her family. Her need for them to remain an anchor of her life is beautiful and is indeed natural. But her fundamentalist family  want to have nothing of her and sever their ties with her, because now she’s not one of them. It is indeed tough on anyone to be cast out of one’s own family. What would’ve made it remarkable is to have shared this journey a bit more. With mental health a huge issue in today’s world, I’d have liked more insight into not just the suffering but the withdrawal from it. More so, when the author understands the bipolar nature of her father and her parents’ protective nature of her brother (who clearly needs help). Maybe, it’s a separate book by itself. Or maybe not. Not to psychoanalyze the author, but it feels like a fight still being fought and the book is about the battles she’s already won, hence the nonchalant story telling as well, perhaps?

 

Of course, in no way I’d undermine the struggles of anyone in an oppressive set up (oppressive just to them) to break free. We all have the right to conduct our lives in the way of our choosing. I liked the narrative, the visual way she recalls her experiences and draws us into her life then and now. Kudos to her for the brave and courageous journey she’s undertaken. 

 

Very good in parts and found wanting in others, it is definitely a good read and I’ll recommend this to anyone who’s up for some shake-up.