12 Jun / Educated by Tara Westover [in Library Journal]
As the youngest of seven children born to a junkyard-tending father and midwife-herbalist mother in remote Idaho, Tara Westover realizes at age 7 that the single fact “that makes [her] family different: we don’t go to school.” Her family espouses Mormonism, although their practices tend toward isolated fundamentalism. Her father’s distrust of government, education, and doctors meant Westover didn’t have a birth certificate, medical records, or school records.
Neglect and abuse were common, especially at the fists of one of her older brothers. Encouraged by another brother who got out, Westover begins the process of getting “educated” when she entered her first-ever classroom at 17 as a freshman at Brigham Young University. Basic history – the Holocaust, the civil rights movement – was yet unknown to her. Once begun, she progresses to Cambridge, Harvard, and back to Cambridge where she earns a history PhD.
Narrator Julia Whelan embodies Westover’s steely, almost detached resolve, maintaining modulated control even amid desperate, dangerous situations – broken bones, third-degree burns, gruesome accidents. She reserves her growls and bellows for the Westover men determined – yet who fail – to keep their women down.
Verdict: A Mormon metamorphosis memoir is such a rarity that readers will undoubtedly be drawn to getting Educated.
Review: modified from “Media, Library Journal, June 15, 2018
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2018