Educated by Tara Westover had been on my reading list for quite some time. Now with my second semester of graduate school finishing up I read the memoir within a week. Besides being on both Bill Gates’s and Barack Obama’s night stands it was one of New York Times’s ten best books of 2018.

Tara Westover is the youngest of seven children growing up Mormon in a survivalist Idaho family. By the time Tara comes around her mother has almost given up on the notion of homeschooling as the kids are needed in the junkyard by Tara’s dad.

This memoir is about Westover’s journey obtaining an education, going from thinking Europe is a country to receiving a PhD from Cambridge. While the hunger for knowledge is captivating, there is the thread of pure survival that makes this memoir so compelling. For Westover to achieve her educational success is not just to get up to speed with her peers but to face family resistance, abuse and rigorous beliefs. While reading this book I felt Westover was walking a tightrope. She could fall off on either side at any moment.
​
Scrapping and handling iron and steel, the children find themselves seriously injured on a regular basis. Since the family doesn’t believe in conventional medicine, mother treats the wounds with herbal remedies.

Tara’s older brother Shawn emotionally and physically abuses her. His manipulative abuse looking similar to that of an abusive partner. Hours later he would apologize, give her a gift or convince her she was the one that had it all wrong. For years Tara convinces herself there was nothing wrong in the way he treats her. She would laugh it off; it was all innocent play. She writes: “I had misunderstood the vital truth: that its not affecting me, that was its effect.”
​
I read a short review of this memoir from a reader that said they were a bit frustrated with Westover’s naivete and belief in her parents after she left her family home to study. I didn’t feel the same way. I know how hard it is to rid yourself of childhood beliefs. Even when confronted with new rationale and contradictory evidence it can take a long time for thought patterns to change. Westover was raised in a family that was taught to be self-reliant in an us-vs-them world. The loyalty towards her family must’ve been enormous. 

Westover writes: “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.” Coming myself from a black-and-white background I understand what she means. Westover doesn’t dwell on her Mormon or religious background. Although her father’s survivalist end-of-times beliefs stem from religious fundamentalism, Westover doesn’t blame religion in her memoir but speaks of mental illness. It’s her dad’s strong voice and conviction that silences others. There is no room for growth, no searching of other’s truths.
​
When Tara finally does see that how her family lived was not congruent with how she wanted to live her life she writes: “although I had renounced my father’s world, I had never quite found the courage to live in this one.” She hadn’t been vaccinated, for example. Fear instilled in us by our parents is nothing to laugh about. Knowing something and living something are two different things. 

​Westover’s discovery of feminism is one example. In the UK she learns of the theory of feminism. Returning home to Idaho she’s witness to a domestic issue between her brother Shawn and his wife. She isn’t able to apply her newly acquired theory quite yet. She doesn’t advise the wife about women’s rights and standing up for herself. Tara falls back into familiar patriarchal ways. Because that feels safer for her in that moment in that place.

When Westover confronts her parents with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her older brother they deny. They try and turn her siblings against her. With some they succeed, with others they don’t. It’s a familiar story. Is it shame that makes the family so desperately want to alter reality for everyone else? They tell people it’s because she isn’t on the righteous path. This is an easy claim. If you’re not a church member any more, you’re an easy mark. Of course it’s you, you’re on the wrong path.
​
Tara Westover beats many odds to get an education. I find myself in awe of her strength to stand up for herself, questioning everything she was taught and building a successful life in a world she was told to fear. 

​She sat on a low adobe wall; a slim elderly woman wearing a flowing skirt and a sun hat. Her long silver locks fell into her face as she pulled weeds from a garden patch behind her and slid them into a linen bag. She looked up as I strolled by in my shorts, tank top and a camera slung over my shoulder. She had one of those faces that instantly lit up as I said hello. “You have a good day now,” she smiled a wide smile. But then, as if reconsidering, she said “how about I wish you luck today - good luck!” I smiled back and wished her the same.

It was not the first time this week that a fleeting thought entered my mind: ‘Maybe this is a sign that I’m on the right path.’ A thought I’d like to dismiss quickly. I am an atheist and do not believe in signs or the spiritual. I believe in solid science. I believe in randomness, but also in cause and effect.
​
Nevertheless, as I continued walking the cracked sidewalks of Santa Fe, I felt less self-conscious with my camera. I felt a little brazen even; walking up private driveways to take a shot of a turquoise door or a flower in bloom.

​Change is not always chosen. A lover takes their life, a partner dies of cancer, we are laid off. We are forced into difficult instant decision making.
Then there are the changes that develop over years, we awaken to them. A seed grows slowly, we don’t even know it has been planted at all. As it grows, we start feeling the shape of it, it’s edges, it’s urges, it’s questions. We look for the answers, but not necessarily in the right places. But the need for change does not let up, it keeps nudging us, annoyingly so. “I am doing all I can,” we say, “What else is there?”

​One day you might be running your daily mile or driving to the grocery store and a thought just pops in your head. “Why don’t I just…” You immediately want to dismiss the thought. “That’s crazy; I can’t do that!” But the thought is there. You keep going back to it. You twist the thought around. You go online and read more about what you can do with it. Finally, you talk it over with your friends and partner. “I’m thinking about making a change, what do you think...”