“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
Dr. Tara Westover is a memoirist, essayist, and historian. She has had an illustrious academic career starting from Brigham Young University, to Harvard and Cambridge where she earned her masters and doctorate degrees. While that attests to talent, what makes Tara remarkable and extraordinarily gifted is her background. The history and barriers she overcame to define success for her self. Educated is her memoir.
Tara Westover was the youngest of 7 children born in the Mormon community of Clifton Idaho. Her birth was never registered, she never went to school or got vaccinated - for all intents and purposes tara and her siblings did not exist in the govt records. She spent much of her early childhood helping her family prepare for the end of the days.
If I could describe Taras's parents in a few words those would be deeply religious, un-yielding, and strongly opinionated. Everything Tara learned about the world was from her father who had a deep paranoia and very non-mainstream views about the government. He believed doomsday was imminent, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible. It is accurate to say most of the things Tara learned were very twisted and incomplete. Her family was her world.
Tara talks about her growing up experiences in fond undertones. There are bleak moments when I was frustrated by her father’s paranoia and flawed worldviews - how on so many occasions multiple people were grievously wounded but they never went to a hospital relying instead on her mother’s herbal remedies. I recall being amazed at how this family managed to survive because some of the accidents were unbelievably violent - but they did - doctors be dammed
As Tara grows older, her third oldest brother, Tyler, breaks free from the family and in a surprising act of courage (his father would call it defiance) decides to go to university. His efforts in self-education are what inspire Tara to make an effort as well. Her struggles with self-learning are nothing short of inspiring. For someone who was homeschooled irregularly for a few handful years when she was young and has no means and resources to get a proper education, Tara gets her hand on an ACT exam book and starts her struggle.
While this is happening another part of her life is unfolding that will go on to define much of her choices and actions in the future. Tara is being abused systematically and violently by her second oldest brother Shawn. Shawn in my understanding is a deeply disturbed individual driven by some pious need to control another woman as a ‘man should’. (sounds terrifyingly familiar no? we have seen many such men around and about us as well - moral policing and slut-shaming). But the more I read about Shawn’s abuse on Tara and his girlfriends the more incensed I got. He evolved from your run of the mill bully to a proper sociopath who would beat one up and follow it up with tears and forgiveness. Shawn was extremely violent towards Tara when she would talk to boys. He would call her whore repeatedly even though she did nothing - something that would haunt her for a long time
“I evolved a new understanding of the word “whore,” one that was less about actions and more about essence. It was not that I had done something wrong so much as that I existed in the wrong way. There was something impure in the fact of my being.”
The stories of abuse are tormenting because even when they happened in front of her family (Shawn dragging her around by her hair/Shawn breaking her wrist) her parents would turn a blind eye and assume it was Taras fault.
Tara eventually rescues herself and after nights/months of self-study. She aces her ACTs and receives admission from Brigham Young University. This is a turning point in Taras's life.
“Tyler stood to go. “There’s a world out there, Tara,” he said. “And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”
In her first-class Tara learns there is something called the holocaust. She does not know what that is. Remember when I said everything she had learned in life had been through the lens of her parents. This is why schooling and learning in a world beyond your immediate home are so important.
Needless to say, Tara struggles academically. But the fear of failing and returning home drives her to work hard like nobody else. Tara writes about how she spends nights up trying to make sense of algebra. How she develops stomach ulcers with stress (and doesn’t go to the hospital because she has no money).
“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”
Every time she goes home for vacations she is met with a fresh wave of abuse until she dreads going home.
“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
By the time Tara graduates - she has been awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She proceeds to complete not only her masters but also her Ph.D. from Cambridge. During these years she decides to confront her family about Shawn’s actions (who is now married and perpetuating new waves of horror on his wife)
Tara wants accountability
Instead she gets gaslit (That is not how it happened), threatened, and ostracized by the family. They continue to protect the abuser while neglecting the abused. She gets disillusioned. Taras experience is one version of what people go through with their parents. At some point in your life, you go from thinking they know everything to see them as adults with limitations. Eventually in the process, Tara estranges herself from her family for her sanity.
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
the above quote from the book reminds me that sometimes in toxic relationships/families - maybe saying goodbye is the best way to go no matter how much you love them.
My Final Thoughts
I had heard this book had received a lot of praise. So I read it with a lot of anticipation. It was easy to read and impossible to put down. Taras's story is a tale of hope and a record of horror. But it leaves you inspired. I recommend it. This book has also received a lot of criticism. Her family is still alive and they have renounced it. Tara has been estranged from half of her family - some of her brothers are still in touch.
Out of niggling curiosity, I looked up her mother on Facebook (she goes by a pseudonym name in the book but it’s easy to get the original names). I looked up her family and wondered how they felt with their lives laid in the open read by millions of people. (and looked up by people like me. weakLOL)
One of my favorite things about books is how they introduce me to other books and works. Educated introduced me to Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Godwin. It also gave me a good base to start reading about second-wave feminist writers like Betty Friedman, Germaine Greer, and Simone de Beauvoir. And first wave feminist writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. One paragraph I particularly loved with reference to John Stuart Mill is shared below
“I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: “It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.”
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Read the rest listening to an all-time fav by Red Hot Chilli Peppers:
The Podcast I am listening to this week..
..is BBC Radios In Our Time: History. As a history buff, I enjoy the detailed discussion each episode has on historical figures and events with experts and scholars. And it’s not boring (available on wherever you get your podcasts - I use google podcasts)
This week whenever I made time for Netflix..
..all I watched were sports movies. There is nothing I love more than a lift-me-up movie of an underdog team/athlete overcoming odds. Here is what I rewatched this week.
The Blind Side [American Football]
Coach Carter [Basket Ball with Mace Windu]
The Longest Yard [American Football]
(also Terry Crews and his McDonalds cheeseburgers - worth it)Miracle [Ice Hockey]
On that note I genuinely don’t understand why American Football is called football. There is almost literally no foot and ball contact during most of the game. It might as well be overdressed Kabaddi with a ball.
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I wrote most of my newsletter yesterday. Today I don’t have the heart to finish it. I feel like all of us are shaken in one way or another by the plane crash tragedy. One of my friends wrote a heartfelt status ending with: Allah have mercy, You have shown us your Jalal, Please show us your Ikram too.
Stay Safe, Stay home
Saima
Educated
Nicely written. However , i am not sure if you intend to encourage people to read books to provide a detailed synopsis. After read the whole thing, I actually felt like i learnt whatever the book has to teach.
Regarding your sports movies excep for miracle i ve seen those. I would recommend the docu series the last dance too.