Review==================
Author: Tara Westover
Title: Educated: A Memoir
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2018
(Reviewed by Peter Wilson)
Speaking to CNN about his reflections on The Book of Mormon Musical, LDS historian and author Richard Bushman said, “Mormons experience the show like looking at themselves in a fun-house mirror. The reflection is hilarious but not really you. The nose is yours but swollen out of proportion.” It makes sense that the musical’s representation of Mormonism was not authentic as the musical is intended to mock and satirize.
Reading Tara Westover’s book Educated also felt like looking at a fun-house mirror of Mormonism. In Tara’s experiences growing up in a Mormon family in Buck Peak, Idaho, key aspects of Mormonism and Mormon culture seemed blown out of proportion. However, unlike the Book of Mormon musical, the representation is not overblown to mock or satirize the religion. Educated is honest and deadly serious. The book feels like a gift, the sharing of a sincere story; not like an axe-grinding session with Mormonism. Here are some of the aspects of Mormonism and Mormon culture that I have experienced that were uncomfortably inflated in Tara Westover’s book:
- An emphasis on self-reliance and emergency preparedness that is partly justified by the potential imminence of the Second Coming.
- Distrust of government as a welfare provider, which can result in welfare recipient shaming and/or hesitancy about receiving welfare and other government benefits.
- Susceptibility to alternative medicine.
- Tendency to homeschool, which is related to a distrust of public education.
- Traditional gender roles.
- Reverence for the founding fathers.
- Rhetoric that draws lines between “the chosen” people and and people “of the world.” As expressed by author Claudia Bushman, Mormons think of themselves as “morality in a sea of moral decay.”
- Distrust of intellectuals, particularly in left-leaning fields like sociology and psychology.
Many of the aforementioned aspects of our culture I have experienced in dramatically different ways than Tara. For example, my mom has a PhD in American religious history, so I was not swayed when a mission companion of mine expressed that he didn’t trust academics with degrees in history to tell history, particularly Mormon history.
Tara’s experiences showed me another side of a culture that I love so much. Her book helped me realize that the potential danger behind some of the above tendencies and beliefs. Educated is an amazingly gripping book and I recommend it to everyone.
As an admirer and advocate of Mormonism, one thing I appreciated about her book is that—even though some will interpret the book as a warning concerning the brainwashing and manipulative power of religion—Tara portrays the goodness in Mormonism too. I loved the Mormon good guys in the book including:
- Robin, Tara’s reasonable, supportive, kind, and persuasive roommate at BYU who convinces Tara to go to a doctor and apply for grants (page 204).
- Tara’s wise and understanding bishop, who helps her understand her brother’s abuse, provides listening ears, and offers guidance and financial support. He seems like he was everything a bishop should be and also represents many things I love about the Church (page 202).
- Tara’s professor at BYU, Dr. Kerry, who encourages her not to worry about her concerns of stepping out of traditional gender roles, and helps open the door for her to do graduate work at Cambridge (page 229-230).
One thing I hope that readers of Educated realize is that a few things that Tara’s family practiced were in opposition of stated Mormon policy or belief. For example, Tara’s family had a deep avoidance and distrust of the medical establishment. At a recent Church General Conference, Dallin Oaks reminded Mormons in his talk Healing the Sick that seeking professional medical help should always be a primary path towards healing. Another unusual aspect of Tara’s family that was contrary to Mormon teaching was its neglect of education. Many Mormon leaders encourage Mormons to “get all of the education that you can.” Amy Chua, in her book The Triple Package, says that Mormons are overrepresented in some the highest educated circles in America.
One unrelated last comment to close here, and this time, I will be putting my educator’s hat on. I currently work as a High School math teacher, but if I had to recommend one skill to learn from school it would be reading. As Doug Lemov says in Teach Like A Champion, “Reading is the skill.” How did Tara go from being totally uneducated to passing the the ACT, graduating from college, receiving her PhD in History from Harvard, and writing a bestselling book? I’ll answer that question from a passage from early in the book when Tara was a teenager at home:
I read the Book of Mormon twice. I read the New Testament, once quickly, then a second time more slowly, pausing to make notes, to cross-reference and even to write short essays on doctrines like faith and sacrifice…. I worked through the Old Testament next, then … speeches, letters and journals of the early Mormon prophets. In retrospect, I see that this was my education, the one that would matter: the hours I spent sitting at a borrowed desk, struggling to parse narrow strands of Mormon doctrine…. The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand (62).
Peter Wilson graduated from Brigham Young University in April 2017, where he majored in Comparative Literature and Economics and minored in Japanese. He currently works as a High School Math teacher in San Jose, California. Peter enjoys reading many different kinds of books including social science, nature writing, memoir, biography, Mormon literature and Mormon history. He also loves to run and to play soccer.
Thanks for the review! I just finished reading it this week, and was totally engrossed. The Mormon elements in the story are interesting. I think she did a good job of not blaming the extremist actions of her family (distrust of the government and the medical establishment, and other extremist ideas) on Mormonism. She made it quite clear throughout the book that her parents occupied an extreme position within Mormonism. For example, when the father was preparing for doomsday at Y2K, she says that the other ward members lightly made fun of him for his ideas, and he looked forward to seeing them proven wrong. I don’t see any evidence that she “inflated” anything, she seemed to be showing the reality of her parents. In her interactions with regular Mormons in her town, and then at BYU, she realizes the differences between them and her family.
Yes. By “inflated”, I didn’t mean dishonestly exaggerated. I just meant that those aspects were much more prominent in her experience with Mormonism than they have been in mine own experience.
I just finished this book, given to me as a Christmas gift. I am from the same generation as Tara’s parents, and remember conspiracy theories being thick in the air growing up in my hometown of Ogden, Utah. My parents listened to some of these things, but never bought into them. They were occasional topics of discussion at home, but my father worked for the federal government and all of my siblings and myself went to school. I have known a few folks both from my childhood, and as an adult, that have started down such paths, and it is disconcerting to see the willful ignorance, as in the choice not to know certain things, play out in their lives.
Westover, I think, was fairly honest about the unreliability of memory, and of the different memories of some of the book’s key events by different observers. The one foundation in her life story is the journals that she kept, that were for her the beginning of education. This is a most remarkable memoir, heartbreaking in the sense that her family seems permanently broken by the decisions of her and two of her brothers to pursue an education, and to engage the outside world on its own terms, and not those dictated by their authoritarian and paranoid father. It is also remarkably hopeful to see her and two brothers break out of the irrevocable mold and succeed despite the huge handicaps of their childhood. This book is not for the faint of heart, as one reviewer notes that it would be “much less harrowing if it were a novel.” The fact that it is as true as her memories can reconstruct makes this a compelling read.