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A review by violentdelights
Educated by Tara Westover
challenging
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
5.0
I thought this book was going to be a memoir about someone with no education getting a PhD. it was, obviously, but it was so much more than that, and I understood it all too well.
In DBT, we learn about dialectical thinking, which is the ability to hold two or more conflicting truths at the same time. To me, more than an education, this book was about the author learning to hold multiple truths after being gaslighted and told her whole life that there is only one truth, and it is not hers. Her need to document, then, and know with certainty was heartbreakingly familiar, as those who grew up with abusive parents often take comfort in detail, in the written word and other proof that what happened to them actually happened. Her ability in the memoir to admit when she wasn’t sure which version of a story was accurate brought me great joy knowing this, knowing how hard she had struggled (as she herself admits) to get to that point.
Her ability to describe her family as fully fledged people, showing them compassion and empathy when they arguably do not deserve shows a great maturity that speaks to the authors ability to essentially teach herself, which I suppose does tie back to what I originally thought the book was about. Still, to me her ability to extend kindness to her family and remember them in fullness instead of merely their cruelest moments demonstrates that brilliance far more than the self-schooling did.
This book is aspirational. Not all abusers deserve forgiveness, of course, but all abused deserves peace, and the knowledge that loveable moments do not loveable people make. Family is a complicated, constantly bending concept, instead of the rigid one society wants you to believe it is - one is not simply born into a family and that’s it. The status of family is earned. Or maybe it’s not - maybe I don’t know exactly what it is yet.
That’s okay, too. Or at least, so this memoir says.
In DBT, we learn about dialectical thinking, which is the ability to hold two or more conflicting truths at the same time. To me, more than an education, this book was about the author learning to hold multiple truths after being gaslighted and told her whole life that there is only one truth, and it is not hers. Her need to document, then, and know with certainty was heartbreakingly familiar, as those who grew up with abusive parents often take comfort in detail, in the written word and other proof that what happened to them actually happened. Her ability in the memoir to admit when she wasn’t sure which version of a story was accurate brought me great joy knowing this, knowing how hard she had struggled (as she herself admits) to get to that point.
Her ability to describe her family as fully fledged people, showing them compassion and empathy when they arguably do not deserve shows a great maturity that speaks to the authors ability to essentially teach herself, which I suppose does tie back to what I originally thought the book was about. Still, to me her ability to extend kindness to her family and remember them in fullness instead of merely their cruelest moments demonstrates that brilliance far more than the self-schooling did.
This book is aspirational. Not all abusers deserve forgiveness, of course, but all abused deserves peace, and the knowledge that loveable moments do not loveable people make. Family is a complicated, constantly bending concept, instead of the rigid one society wants you to believe it is - one is not simply born into a family and that’s it. The status of family is earned. Or maybe it’s not - maybe I don’t know exactly what it is yet.
That’s okay, too. Or at least, so this memoir says.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs