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A review by solarnm
Educated by Tara Westover
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Could not put it down. Heartbreaking.
Quotes I liked from the book:
"Praise was a poison to me; I choked on it. I wanted the professor to shout at me, wanted it so deeply I felt dizzy from the deprivation. The ugliness of me had to be given expression. If it was not expressed in his voice, I would need to express it in mine."
'"You must stop yourself from thinking like that," Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. "You are not fool's gold, shining only under a particular light, Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were, It was always in you. Not in Cambridge, In you, You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even
change how you see yourself- even gold appears dull in some
lighting-but that is the illusion. And it always was."'
'"She was just a cockney in a nice dress. Until she believed in
herself. Then it didn't matter what dress she wore."'
'"Very good," the lecturer said, "And the second?"
"Positive liberty," another student said, "is freedom from internal constraints."
I wrote this definition in my notes, but I didn't understand it,
The lecturer tried to clarify, He said positive liberty is self-mastery - the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one's own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion."
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds"
"My future was motherhood; his, fatherhood. They sounded similar but they were not. To be one was to be a decider. To preside. To call the family to order. To be the other was to be among those called."
"This knowledge, like so much of my self-knowledge, had come to me in the voice of people I knew, people I loved. All through the years that voice had been with me, whispering, wondering, worrying. That I was not right. That my dreams were perversions. That voice had many timbres, many tones. Sometimes it was my father's voice; more often it was my own."
'"It is a subject on which nothing final can be known." The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations."
"Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman"
"I'm fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart, I'm just lazy. Why it's better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I'm not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital."
"Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people."
"The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would 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"
Quotes I liked from the book:
'"You must stop yourself from thinking like that," Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. "You are not fool's gold, shining only under a particular light, Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were, It was always in you. Not in Cambridge, In you, You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even
change how you see yourself- even gold appears dull in some
lighting-but that is the illusion. And it always was."'
'"She was just a cockney in a nice dress. Until she believed in
herself. Then it didn't matter what dress she wore."'
'"Very good," the lecturer said, "And the second?"
"Positive liberty," another student said, "is freedom from internal constraints."
I wrote this definition in my notes, but I didn't understand it,
The lecturer tried to clarify, He said positive liberty is self-mastery - the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one's own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion."
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds"
"My future was motherhood; his, fatherhood. They sounded similar but they were not. To be one was to be a decider. To preside. To call the family to order. To be the other was to be among those called."
"This knowledge, like so much of my self-knowledge, had come to me in the voice of people I knew, people I loved. All through the years that voice had been with me, whispering, wondering, worrying. That I was not right. That my dreams were perversions. That voice had many timbres, many tones. Sometimes it was my father's voice; more often it was my own."
'"It is a subject on which nothing final can be known." The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations."
"Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman"
"I'm fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart, I'm just lazy. Why it's better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I'm not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital."
"Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people."
"The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would 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"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Injury/Injury detail