Monthly Book Pick: Educated by Tara Westover

“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me” (270).

Educated by Tara Westover details the author’s troublesome childhood where she fights to forge independence from her Mormon parents. The book opens startlingly as Tara and her family prepare for the end of the world. Slowly, readers are submerged into the tumultuous life of the Westovers, survivalists born in the mountains of Idaho who don’t believe in medicine or education. At the age of seventeen, through purchasing SAT books and studying to pass the test all on her own, Tara steps into a classroom for the very first time. Led by her newfound insatiable passion for learning, she eventually earns a PhD from Cambridge University.

Educated compels readers to answer one complicated question: At what point do familial ties start to bend and snap? When does you’re own self-worth come first? An inspiring, coming-of-age narrative, Tara Westover deserves all of the awards not only for her book, but for the amount she has managed to accomplish despite her past.