Educated

Rating

8/10 The story is great! Definitely worth the time and effort. Both for the artistic value of her writing style and the reflection on her life; on how our parents shape us and make us the adults we become - or not, if we choose to rebel.

Although it’s a fairly thick book, the stories that Tara retells all the way from her early childhood make it a gripping tale without any space for boredom or page-skipping. I especially liked the intertwining of story-telling and her later reflection on how these events affected her both in the moment and then later in her life. I also appreciated the frequent questioning of her own memories as I’ve noticed for myself how memories shift and take on a life of their own with the passage of time. Becoming a borderline fictitious fragments of reality rather than actual recounts of past events.

The main philosophical theme of the whole story is ‘the family question’. My understanding of the term is that it encompasses both the purpose and the influence of family on the individual’s life and on society as a whole. I’m sure you’ve come across people, or are even related to them, that say something along the lines of ‘family is everything’, or in certain situations, ‘but they are your family’. As if family was sacred, no matter the circumstance or the human complexity of its individual members. In my opinion, family is a network of relationships you are born into but you have no obligation to stay embedded in forever. Of course you want to keep on good terms, just as in any other relationship, but the normal course of life is that you replace the family you were born into by the family you create for yourself. Throughout the course of your life, you have to balance the independent needs and views of your ever changing personality, with those of your family members. It’s a delicate dance that aims to find a balance between untamed self expression and fulfilling the expectations of your family members. Then depending on how far does your personal journey take you from that of your family members, you either find a general long term equilibrium, or you veer too far off path and fall out from the group. Both can happen and there simply will be individuals who will fall out of their family. Some for purely narcistic reasons, some for ideological, and some for actual physical survival.

Hence, I don’t think that assertions like ‘family is everything’ are warranted since as much as one can find themselves in line with the general opinions and expectations of their family members, it is also completely possible that one will not achieve this in the long run. And in such cases, they might decide to cut contact; not necessarily on bad terms, just not on active terms. And that’s fine. That’s simply the full nuance of being a member of a tribe - sometimes you find a new tribe and you can leave the old one with a peaceful agreement to visit on Christmas, call on birthdays and come say your final goodbye at the funeral.

At some point in her life, Tara decided that she can no longer fulfill the role her family expects of her, nor can she allow them to make her who she no longer is or wants to be. And for that reason, she left the tribe. This book is basically her reflection on the loss and her attempt to make a peace with it.

Synopsis

Tara is the youngest of the 7 kids born to a survivalist Mormon parents in a tiny village in Idaho, USA. She is raised on a junkyard, helping her father scrape enough metal to get them by. Like her siblings, she never goes to school or a hospital, since according to her father, both are controlled by the Lucifer and the Illuminati. However, one of Tara’s older brothers is an introvert who enjoys reading books and listening to classical music. He decides he had enough of life under his father’s religious reign and leaves the home to study at a college. He got accepted by secretly studying for an SAT and scoring a high result. This plants a seed in Tara’s young mind and at 17 she decides to follow his footsteps. This marks the beginning of the end of the relationship with her parents and most of the other family members. Over the years, as she completes her bachelors, masters and eventually a PhD, Tara reflects on her childhood, her manipulative father and an abusive older brother. She realizes what a toxic environment she grew up in and what effects it hand on her self-esteem, self-image and self-confidence. With education she realizes the limits that were imposed upon her by the environment she grew up in, and although with a great struggle, she disconnects from her family and forges a path for herself on her own.

Notes

No notes for this one. Not a single underlined sentence. There were a few passages where I paused and pondered their meaning for my own life, but in general the book reads more as a first-person actioned packed novel rather than a recount of one’s actual life. So I just read it as a novel, immersing myself in the story, devouring the pages as they came.