WardenRed reviewed Educated by Tara Westover
None
5 stars
First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.
The two words that probably best describe my impression of the book are 'chilling' and 'gripping.' A lot of the events depicted here felt frighteningly familiar. As a child, I was never isolated and abused to the degree Tara was, and my parents were neither Mormons nor survivalists, but there was its share of moments coming from the same place. My family also had a severe distrust of doctors and medication; I can't imagine them not going to a hospital with third degree burns or a brain injury like the author's parents, but almost anything less obviously life-threatening than that was expected to be weathered at home. For example, as a child, I survived what I later realized was a very bad pneumonia with only herbal syrups and hot tea as remedies. I was sick for over …
First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.
The two words that probably best describe my impression of the book are 'chilling' and 'gripping.' A lot of the events depicted here felt frighteningly familiar. As a child, I was never isolated and abused to the degree Tara was, and my parents were neither Mormons nor survivalists, but there was its share of moments coming from the same place. My family also had a severe distrust of doctors and medication; I can't imagine them not going to a hospital with third degree burns or a brain injury like the author's parents, but almost anything less obviously life-threatening than that was expected to be weathered at home. For example, as a child, I survived what I later realized was a very bad pneumonia with only herbal syrups and hot tea as remedies. I was sick for over 2 months and spent over a year coughing occasionally and often feeling extremely weak. I never saw a doctor about it.
I wasn't deliberately sheltered from information that didn't mash well with my parents' beliefs about the world around us—I went to school, I made friends—and my brother wasn't anywhere as bad as Shawn. I had a persistent uncomfortable thought as I read this book though: he may not have been so bad because he's younger than me. I was always taller, I was more flexible, and for the most part, faster. When he tried to grab me, I knew how to twist out of his grip. When it looked like he might hit me, I knew how to step away quickly, how to disappear in the bathroom, to lock the door and wait it out. To our parents, we were playing games, joking around, fighting as siblings do, sorting it out between ourselves. My brother had a bad temper growing up. That happens to boys. I could handle it. I was flawed and the black sheep and deserved it, anyway.
And the emotional manipulations, the gaslighting, the twisting of my memories, the warping of my reality—it wasn't that bad, that serious, as what the book depicts, but. But.
I seriously need to read something light and life-affirming now before I go completely down that rabbit's hole. But this book is, I think, a must-read to everyone wanting to understand what abuse is, what gaslighting is, what effect they have, why it's so damn hard for the victims to break ties with the abusers that raised them, how hard it is to let go of the beliefs you grew up with, even when they are beliefs about yourself that you're already proving false by simply existing as you are.
There were certain details that made me frown a bit and think, "But how would that work?", such as Tara taking a semester to get from not understanding a subject at all to getting a 100% grade (I've seen other people express surprise about it in their reviews, too), or how it's possible to start college with no documents but a birth certificate (probably a cultural difference; it's wholly impossible in my country—you need that certificate, yes, and also your citizen passport/id card that everyone gets at 14, the tax identification number, a medical certificate including some basic health assessment stuff that you can only get after going through that assessment in a hospital, etc. Probably the rules are laxer in the US?). But that didn't undermine the story for me. Some parts of the book could have come from my own diaries, with different details but the same gist. The parts about feeling responsible for the abuser's actions as a form of having control. How forcing yourself not to be affected or changed by their actions is the effect. How lying to yourself about not needing help is so much more important sometimes than getting that help you need.
...I REALLY need to go read something light and life-affirming. And less familiar.
Read for the following October 2020 Readathons:
- SbooksAndTea: Featuring something you're afraid of
- #gothicreadathon: Theorizing Women