September 2020: Educated (Westover)

Post date: Oct 12, 2020 3:9:15 AM

Like many, I first came to Tara Westover’s Educated expecting a moving story of one woman’s educational journey. I knew she was largely self-taught, and I figured she would describe what it was about academia that motivated her to pursue an advanced education. What I was not expecting was the nightmare of abuse and terror that characterized her childhood.

Born in 1986, Westover was the youngest of seven children in a fundamentalist Mormon family that lived on an isolated mountain in rural Idaho. Dominated by her tyrannical and mentally unstable father, the family ekes out a living doing the occasional construction job and selling scrap metal from the junkyard on their property. Westover’s mother brings in additional funds by midwifery and selling herbal remedies. Growing increasingly distrustful of the government and certain that the collapse of American society is immanent, Westover’s father pulls his older children out of school and does not register the births of his youngest ones. The children are supposed to be homeschooled, but this obligation is almost completely neglected as the parents focus on the family’s self-sufficiency and on preparing for the imagined conflicts to come. Westover’s father delights in pushing limits and working in unsafe conditions, and he and his children suffer a series of horrifying injuries, almost none of which receive proper medical attention.

Terrorized by an abusive and manipulative older brother and cut off from her peers by her father’s paranoia, Westover seems destined to spend the rest of her life on the family’s homestead. However, inspired by another brother’s example, she embarks on a project of self-education, takes the ACT and gets into Brigham Young University at the age of 17. Although her complete lack of formal schooling creates great challenges for her, her dedication and intelligence impress her professors, leading to opportunities to study at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. Throughout her higher education, she struggles to free herself from the hold that her family has on her life and self-image. It is only when she breaks ties with her most of her family completely, that she finds the focus and energy she needs to complete her Ph.D. in History.

As with J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, Westover’s tale of unlikely academic success is inspiring. Also, as with Vance’s book, Westover’s book is not really about academia and the value of an education, except in so far as it offers a pathway to both physical and psychological escape. Both books present us with an unflattering and troubling portrait of a family living in poverty in rural, small-town America. Both books can be difficult to read. The vivid descriptions of the violence and abuse that Westover experienced turned off some of our members. It felt almost voyeuristic to be witnessing such events, and some of us grew frustrated by the fact that Westover kept returning to her abusers, that she did not sever ties sooner. By her own admission, Westover lied to protect her family, both to herself, in her own journals, and to others. We were not sure if we could trust her writing now. After all, she was quite open about the fact that her relatives remember some of the events quite differently. If things were really as bad as she describes, we wondered, how was it possible that Westover and two of her brothers went on to earn Ph.D’s? If her parents were so difunctional, how were they eventually able to turn her mother’s herbal remedies into a successful business?

At the beginning of our discussion, the criticisms of Westover became so intense that we had to do a conversational reset, reminding ourselves that Westover was a victim of abuse and that it is by no means uncommon for people who are abused to return to their abusers and/or to find it incredibly difficult to get away. Westover’s admission that she may not have all the details of her childhood right, reveals her underlying honesty as much as indicates the unreliability of some of her narration. After all, memories are notoriously inaccurate, and history usually involves some process of guesswork and reasoning from the available evidence. Perhaps it is her Ph.D. in History that has made her so open about this process in her own work, and even though her parents have publicly challenged Westover’s book, there are others who support her version of events, and the work was independently fact checked before publication.

Perhaps the best insight into the book comes from reflecting on its title: Educated. We are not surprised by the education that she receives at university and by the ways it expands her world view and self-image. More surprising are the lessons she learns from the family she must eventually abandon. As we get drawn into the world of her childhood, it is easy to focus on the various sources of trauma. However, there is also clear evidence of her family’s strengths. They taught her self-reliance, resilience, and persistence. Her parents may have struggled with mental illness and self-denial, but they were clearly intelligent, as their ability to get by with so little reveals. Perhaps somewhat ironically, these strengths explain both the fact that Westover found it so hard to get away from her family and the fact that she, ultimately, had the personal and intellectual resources necessary to craft her own path in the world.