The projector clicks. An image of a man, stood before a concrete wall in a faded hat and overcoat, paints the wall at the front of the university classroom. Tara turns the pages of her textbook until she finds the same image. Below it is a brief description with a word Tara has never seen or heard before. She raises her hand, and asks, ‘I don’t know this word, what does it mean?’ A stunned silence resonates. ‘Thanks for that’, the professor replies. Tara stares at her shoes for the remainder of the lecture, feeling the sting on her skin from the eyes of her classmates. The bell eventually rings, and Tara runs to a computer to look up the word ‘Holocaust’.
Before university, Tara never went to school. Instead, her mother taught her in their isolated home at the base of a mountain, limited solely to the study of the Bible and a book of mathematical questions, the latter of which came with no supervision or assistance. Her family are strict Mormons; her father, when not commanding his four sons and two daughters to jeopardise their lives working in his deadly junkyard, prepares his family for the inevitable apocalypse, ordering his children to stockpile weapons and fill hundreds of jars with preserved food in order to survive the hordes of starving sinners that will breach the doors of the believers during the end of times.
Although as far from reality as this may sound to most of us, Educated is not fiction, it is memoir.
As Westover notes at the beginning of her memoir, however, this is not a story about Mormonism, nor any form of religious belief — this is the story of real people, real relationships; flawed and dangerous, impressionable and vulnerable. Educated explores, via the seemingly infinite number of shocking and disturbing childhood events Tara experienced first-hand, the vast complexities of family life, connection, abandonment, and how abuse can be misconstrued or distorted by the self to be viewed as love, support, or security. A surreal, dense, and unforgettable memoir, Educated never feels exploitative of a devout religious culture. Rather, it is an autopsy of the ambiguity of morality when individuals are educated under differing spheres of ideology — how, to one person, an action or belief is rooted in righteousness, while, to another, that same action or belief is unethical or obscene. It is a study on perspective, power, and fear, with a major focus on themes such as institutionalised sexism, conflict with the self and others, and ultimately faith; in yourself, your family, your future, and how often that resolve will be broken.
But, I suppose, and arguably most importantly (though it may be immoral to write this), Educated is devastatingly entertaining. Morbidly fascinating, Educated is, without doubt, an essential read.