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challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Her childhood... so much emotional and physical violence under the guise of religious fervor and a thin veneer of normalcy only made "normal" through isolation and mundanity of repetition. She has done what seems so impossible. She got out. Despite it all, she grew and got out. But how?
“When life seems lunatic, who knows where the madness lies?” (P. 346)
Tara writes as her story with such vivid detail and incredible drama that it almost seems fiction, the colors too real, the crazy dad chatter simply too crazy to be true. But this WAS her reality, her father’s illness colored every facet of her world from birth, and even with distance and time, still colors her world today (just in a different way. Less defining, more accenting). She escaped the unbeatable escape room of her upbringing and came out wiser, stronger, and somehow…softer. The way compacted sand becomes glass, and the sea smooths the pits and edges to a satin surface. Tara’s expertise in the Mountain West is simultaneously so incredibly unique and a mirror of many lives of Americans who grew up in this kind of environment. Inherently and intentionally isolated (at first, then the isolation simply morphs into the collective group’s concept of “normal”).
A glimpse behind the curtain, tantalizing in its foreign nature and yet so very, very familiar (as a girl who grew up with a troubled dad, regularly living in highly religious environments—though not this specific flavor, I could see the occasional parallels in my own communities), Educated is an unforgettable memoir. I was suggested this book by a friend, and I fully recommend it.
“When life seems lunatic, who knows where the madness lies?” (P. 346)
Tara writes as her story with such vivid detail and incredible drama that it almost seems fiction, the colors too real, the crazy dad chatter simply too crazy to be true. But this WAS her reality, her father’s illness colored every facet of her world from birth, and even with distance and time, still colors her world today (just in a different way. Less defining, more accenting). She escaped the unbeatable escape room of her upbringing and came out wiser, stronger, and somehow…softer. The way compacted sand becomes glass, and the sea smooths the pits and edges to a satin surface. Tara’s expertise in the Mountain West is simultaneously so incredibly unique and a mirror of many lives of Americans who grew up in this kind of environment. Inherently and intentionally isolated (at first, then the isolation simply morphs into the collective group’s concept of “normal”).
A glimpse behind the curtain, tantalizing in its foreign nature and yet so very, very familiar (as a girl who grew up with a troubled dad, regularly living in highly religious environments—though not this specific flavor, I could see the occasional parallels in my own communities), Educated is an unforgettable memoir. I was suggested this book by a friend, and I fully recommend it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Injury/Injury detail