I’ve thought a lot about the relationship between environment, perspective and identity. It’s a topic that I’ve written about before, and on which my opinions have been stretched, shaped and challenged by books like Justice (with its discussion of Rawlsian contractarianism) and So You Want to Talk About Race (with its penetrative exploration of privilege and power).
Tara Westover’s Educated blew me out the water.
Written by the seventh child of two Mormon survivalists - a child who didn’t receive a birth certificate until she was nine, go to school until she was 17 or see a doctor until she was 19 - Educated is a gripping, shocking, powerful account of how the world of a young woman raised by God and the mountains collided with the world that she left it for, a world of professors and physicians and freedom to think in new ways.
In Part One, Westover recounts her childhood on the mountain working in her father’s junkyard and preparing with her family for the End of Days. On my first day with the book, I read the first three chapters slowly and with some confusion; the world Westover described was so alien to me that I wasn’t sure where this story was going or if I would be able to understand it. But on my second day, when I read the next 13 chapters of Part One (and the remaining 27 chapters of Parts Two and Three, in the same sitting), I realized that Westover’s deep and detailed recounting of her unconventional childhood is exactly what makes her narrative so powerful and so remarkable.
After living with Westover through her time in a household distrustful of doctors, schools, and the federal government, and watching her gradually come to look outside of the world of her parents, the conflict of perspectives that comes in Part Two - when Westover attends university - is mind-blowing.
Having seen her childhood through her eyes, readers are in the unique and revelatory position of both understanding and being surprised by Westover’s struggles to make sense of the new world she finds herself in. Having Westover’s perspective, as built up for us in Part One, allows us to realize why the things she encounters in the world of higher education and mainstream society are so confounding for her. At the same time, having our perspective as citizens of that society means that we don’t aren’t even aware of the fundamental assumptions that underpin it until we see Westover run into them.
In this way, Westover’s memoir is an extraordinary outside view of the world that most of us take entirely for granted. It’s also an inspiring, painful and deeply moving story of how Westover struggled to reconcile that world with her loyalty to her family and her faith.
I started Educated because people had told me it was amazing; I finished it because they were right.
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