“The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she should have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”
Memoir writing not only helps to reconcile with the
distressful past, but also can help with healing long-term
emotional/psychological problems by raking up the truth which we had
involuntarily hidden from ourselves. In this vein, the much-heralded memoir from
Tara Westover ‘Educated’ (published February 2018) bowls us over not just
because of the author’s inspiring life-journey or due to the strange child
upbringing detailed in the book that’s far removed from our unproblematic and
considerably affluent formative years. What particularly captivated me about
Tara Westover’s keenly observant voice is the knack with which she crisply
unearths the truth regarding family, fundamentalism, education, self-identity,
abuse, and memory. At the same time, she also maintains a kind of ambivalence
to not assign simple black and white roles to the people in her life. Irrespective
of the social and cultural differences, Educated comes across a vital text to
understand how true education can change one's mind for the better.
Born on September 1986 and raised near the mountainside in
Idaho, Tara Westover was the seventh (and last) child of her Mormon survivalist
parents. Dad and mom rigorously followed their religious dogma and were determined
to protect their children from the encroaching modernity and brainwashing Illuminati. While the first three of Tara’s siblings had a birth certificate,
the last four didn’t and consequently sheltered from public schooling. The mid-wife mom
took over home-schooling. Dad put the children to work in a perilous,
family-owned junkyard. Tara’s eldest siblings have a different memory of their
father, a man capable of showing warmth and who didn’t fiercely impose his
beliefs on others. But by the time Tara came into existence, the dad was on
full-fanatic mode, scowling at anything connected with the modern world.
Westover didn’t set a foot inside an educational institution
up until she left her home (in adolescence). However, she self-taught herself
enough to attend Brigham Young University, and Tara eventually earned a
doctorate from Harvard. The remarkable determination with which she leaped from
the claws of her domineering family to liberation drives the subject of Tara’s
memoir. Divided into three chapters, Tara starts by delineating her difficult
childhood, and then comes the uncertain college-going days, and finally the
present-day awakening. Although the three parts are equally moving, the most
intriguing part for a reader would be Tara’s evocation of her childhood
memories which is filled with emotional and physical pain. Dad’s obsession on
God is at an extreme level that he regards plenty of his careless highway and
junkyard accidents as God’s Will.
 |
| Tara Westover |
Tara details the shocking, avoidable accidents at the
junkyard to which she and her siblings were often subjected to. Juggling
between moments of silence, cheer, and fury (which later the author recognizes
as Bi-polar disorder), dad infuses fear and terror into his children more than
warmth and love. A little slip in the dressing code could earn Tara the label of
‘whore’. Mom acknowledges dad’s extreme behavior, but she largely compiles to
his authority while assuaging her children’s physical injuries with home-made
homeopathic ointments. However, one of Tara’s elder brothers, the sensitive and
sensible Tyler with an interest in book and classical music, showed her a way
out. Tyler, unlike his other brothers who left home only to do physical labor,
decided to pursue education through college. He also encouraged Tara to escape
from her own ignorance and tenacious parents by preparing for ACT test. Adding
more to Tara’s domestic woes is the home-coming of her second-eldest brother
Shawn (a pseudonym) who plays sickening head-games and inflicts violent abuse.
He assaulted her repeatedly over the years, dragging her by her hair to shove
her head into the toilet, twisting her wrist or choking her to unconsciousness
for being ‘whorish’.
Tara passed the ACT test at age 16 (somehow teaches herself
algebra and trigonometry to pass the exam) and heads off to college. But she
was still ignorant about the ways of the world. She has never heard of the word 'Holocaust', thought Europe was a country, and her writing is too formal because
the only book she often read is Bible. With support from worldly professors and
putting her stupendous learning skills to use, Tara eventually graduated from
Brigham Young University. While Tara insists on the importance of education,
she doesn’t narrowly focus on her own educational achievements (like earning a
doctorate). The heroic part of the book underlines how Tara’s education helped
her to singe-handedly take on a powerful family which rejected and stayed
silent over its history of physical and emotional abuse.
Tara Westover’s voice represents female equality and indicts
patriarchy, but she does so by relating to the truth of her experiences that’s
full of depth and complexity. The author has assigned pseudonyms to her family
members who vehemently oppose her current stand. Yet Tara offers a very complex
portrait of her siblings and parents without giving them simple roles of good
and bad. “We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in
the stories other people tell”, Tara writes as she attempts to bring the full
personality of even dad and Shawn despite the irreparable damages they have inflicted
upon others. At another occasion she writes, “You can miss a person every day,
and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.” This is reflected in
Tara’s ambivalent feelings while recalling her dad’s capacity for affection,
which lies beneath his domineering and indifferent nature. Whether evoking the
beauty of the picturesque landscapes she grew up or perfectly delineating the
emotional scars she bears, Tara writes with rawness and uncommon intelligence. Altogether,
Educated: A Memoir (400 pages) chronicles an eye-opening, soul-wrenching
personal journey to exhibit what’s at the heart of education and what it can
offer to one’s soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment