Family first; that’s how most people think. For many, that kind of ideology works, but what happens when you’re in a toxic or even abusive family? What happens when being with your family shreds every last piece of not only your happiness but your wellbeing? If they deprive you of your basic human rights, do you stay with them? Can you stay with them? For some people, you lose the freedom of social security, or maybe the right to food and shelter. For Tara Westover in her memoir Educated, family loyalty cost her an education, freedom of thought, and religion. Educated features a girl who rises out of the ashes of a broken family; Tara Westover is the kind of writer that can put emotions into words without a flaw, and she effectively communicates how she twisted (or betrayed) herself to please her family, even after realizing how much harm they’ve done to her life, capturing the reader and making this a book worth reading.
Educated, Tara Westover’s memoir about a life of suppression in the mountains of Idaho, portrays an overlooked, appalling rural world in which Tara is unable to receive a high school education when her family, specifically her father, create an oppressive, off-the-grid lifestyle where men, women, and children alike are unable to be themselves. Tara must overcome her family’s anti-government, anti-woman ideology in a journey to find herself; however, will she have the strength to follow through with her beliefs and sever ties with the only people she’s ever known? Or does family loyalty always win out in the end?
The thing that makes Educated a timeless classic rather than a great read is the impeccable writing. Never has an author been able to put emotions into words so clearly. Never has an author been able to articulate complex ideas so perfectly. After Tara’s freshmen year of college, she returns home with new knowledge—or rather, just knowledge—on African American history. While working, Tara’s older brother, Shawn, begins to call her a racist nickname he used when they were kids. Tara is able to articulate the emotions she felt flawlessly: “The words and the way Shawn said it hadn’t changed; only my ears were different. They no longer heard the jingle of a joke in it. What they heard was a signal, a call through time, which was answered with a mounting conviction: that never again would I allow myself to be made a food soldier in a conflict I did not understand” (Westover 181). Everything about that is stunning. Even the very end of it, the part about the foot soldier, could hold on its own. No backstory needed. It’s genius that she takes herself out of the situation at the start of the joke and talks about her ears rather than herself because it emphasises how this isn’t just her opinion (which, often times, is said to be wrong when with her family), but something is vouching for her, even if that something is her own ears. A much more brief line that is a gorgeous definition of an emotion happens much later in the book: “Guilt,” it reads, “is the fear of one’s own wretchedness” (328). Guilt is often an emotion people run away from. It tends to have much more roundabout descriptions because of the memories just the word guilt can give people. Tara, however, is brave. She faces guilt head-on and puts all of it into only one sentence. While earning her PhD, Tara also poses a series of rhetorical questions that are enough to make one tear up. She feels as though no one could ever love her after being disowned by her family; however, her brother, Tyler, changes her mind. He sends her a copy of a letter for their parents saying that their family has “a perverted idea” (316) of loyalty. Writing this letter almost got Tyler exiled, too. Tara thinks to herself, “How do you thank a brother who refused to let you go, who seized your hand and wrenched you upward, just as you had decided to stop kicking and sinking? There aren’t words for that” (317). Tara, it seems, in that question, found the words. She found a new and creative way to use the sometimes overused “it feels like I’m drowning” idea. She mentions the drowning without actually mentioning it then proceeds to go beyond, to thank someone that pulled her out of the water. If Tara Westover’s words aren’t elegant and elevated, what is?
In the actual story of the story (rather than the diction), Tara Westover spends much of the book broken. One of Tara’s developments that stood out was her inability to let go of her family, even after realizing how much harm they were doing to her. After a year and a half of college with small breaks going home, Tara returns to Buck’s Peak, the mountain she grew up on, for Thanksgiving break. While at home, she goes to the grocery store with her abusive brother, Shawn. Shawn attacks her, and for a moment she records in her journal that he was violent and terrifying but goes to change it soon after: “It was a misunderstanding,” she revised. “If I’d asked him to stop, he would have” (Westover 196). That goes directly against what happened—he attacked her, and she shrieked for him to let her go, but “It was like getting beaten by a zombie” (Westover 195). Tara desperately wanted to cover up his mistakes because of the corruption her entire life: Do you have proof, Tara? Why would your brother hurt you? This is the devil’s influence. This is what college does to people. All of this might sound crazy to someone who’s grown up in a healthy life, but to Tara, they’re right. To Tara, she always has been and always will be a lying whore with no sense of family loyalty, and Shawn, an affectionate, perfect brother. Tara’s family’s influence continues long after her bachelor’s degree, all the way into when she was receiving her PhD from Harvard. While studying at Harvard, Tara begins to get nightmares about her father and life at Buck’s Peak. They get so intense that she’ll find herself screaming and bolting down the street. You’d think that her extreme fear of her family would keep her away, but it puts her in a rut of TV show-binging that she decides can only be fixed if she goes to see her family. “I can still fix this,” (308) Tara thinks to herself as she gets on the plane. Going to see her family was crazy—a friend, Drew, even tells her this—but Tara refuses to see this. Her family terrified her so much she got night terrors, ruining her mental health and her grades. This drop in grades and happiness causes her to go back to the core of her fear. Tara’s family has her warped for much of her life.
So what do you think? Family first, even in a case as extreme as Tara’s? Should she have powered through the abuse, pretended she didn’t know her rights were being stripped away without a second thought? Or did Tara make the right choice by severing unhealthy ties and sharing her experiences with the world? Whatever you believe, Educated is a book worth reading. It is both poetic and eye-opening, something that will live on with its reader long after they put the book down.