Educated and education...

 

There are plenty of creative non-fiction pieces that I have read, ranging from books like A Long Way Gone to The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and many works in between but one stands out to me both in it’s way of capturing a quintessentially American phenomenon whilst utilizing the medium of written word to the fullest extent. Educated: A Memoir, a book written by the academic Tara Westover covers her journey fighting earnestly for something many of us take for granted: access to education. Her story not only reflects the state of American politics, but asks the reader to consider the intricacies of religion and freedom in a country that prides itself on those principles.

Growing up as the youngest child in a militant, off the grid, doomsday prepper Mormon family, Tara had many the childhood experience that would, in the vast majority of places, get your kids taken away from you faster than you could blink. Because of their location in rural Idaho, the Westover family communicated only with extended family and other off-the grid survivalist types. In one instance, Tara describes a moment in her childhood when her father accidentally drives metal through her calf while having her climb on heavy machinery, causing lasting trauma, physically and mentally. In another, she tells the story of her 14-year-old brother driving the family van off the road and into a ditch during a snow-storm and, instead of calling for medical help, calls for a neighbor to come and transport the very injured Westover’s to their homestead to avoid modern medical help.

While there are many interesting facets to this book, the interpersonal relationships between Tara, her five siblings, and her parents are most interesting. Largely at odds with how they view life and the outside world, this memoir tells the story of a woman whose journey to success starts and ends with her quest for knowledge.

Excerpt can be found here as well

“The hill is paved with wild wheat. If the conifers and sagebrush are soloists, the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following all the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind.

Turning toward our house on the hillside, I see movements of a different kind, tall shadows stiffly pushing through the currents. My brothers are awake, testing the weather. I imagine my mother at the stove, hovering over bran pancakes. I picture my father hunched by the back door, lacing his steel-toed boots and threading his callused hands into welding gloves. On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.

I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.

Dad worries that the Government will force us to go but it can’t, because it doesn’t know about us. Four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom. When I am nine, I will be issued a Delayed Certificate of Birth, but at this moment, according to the state of Idaho and the federal government, I do not exist.

Of course I did exist. I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.” Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir.