Born	September 27, 1986 (age 34)
Occupation	Historian and author
Language	English
Alma mater	Brigham Young University, University of Cambridge
Notable works	Educated

Tara Westover (born September 27, 1986)^[1] is an American memoirist, essayist and historian. Her memoir Educated (2018) debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times ranked Educated as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018.^[2] Because of her book, Westover was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.^[3]

Early life and education[edit]

Westover was the youngest of seven children born in Clifton, Idaho (population 259) to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints survivalist parents. She has five older brothers and an older sister.^[4][5] Her parents were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, public schools, and the federal government. Westover was born at home, delivered by a midwife, and was never taken to a doctor or nurse. She was not registered for a birth certificate until she was nine years old. Their father resisted getting formal medical treatment for any of the family. Even when seriously injured, the children were treated only by their mother, who had studied herbalism and other methods of alternative healing.

All the siblings were loosely homeschooled by their mother. Westover has said an older brother taught her to read, and she studied the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But she never attended a lecture, wrote an essay, or took an exam. There were few textbooks in their house.

As a teenager, Westover began to want to enter the larger world and attend college. She purchased textbooks and studied independently in order to score well on the ACT Exam. She gained admission to Brigham Young University and was awarded a scholarship, although she had no high school diploma. After a difficult first year, in which Westover struggled to adjust to academia and the wider society there, she became more successful and graduated with honors in 2008.

She then earned a Masters degree from the University of Cambridge at Trinity College^[6] as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard University in 2010. She returned to Trinity College, Cambridge, where she earned a doctorate in intellectual history in 2014. Her thesis is entitled 'The Family, Morality and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813–1890'.^[7]

By its nature, a memoir is a representation of the author’s impressions and memories of his or her past. As a memoir, Educated is written in the first person perspective, which means its told from Westover’s point of view. Consequently, the reader absorbs Westover’s memories and experiences as she describes them as an adult in the present. Educated: A Memoir. Random House, 2018. The memoir opened with Tara reflecting on the mountainous land on which she grew up and the way her childhood was influenced from such isolation from society. Grandma-down-the-hill offered to take Tara to a school in Arizona, but she refused to leave her family.

In 2009, while a graduate student at Cambridge, Westover told her parents that for many years (since age 15), she had been physically and psychologically abused by an older brother. Her parents denied her account and suggested that Westover was under the influence of Satan. The family split over these events. Westover wrote about the estrangement, and her unusual path to and through university education in her 2018 memoir, Educated.

Westover was Fall 2019 A.M. Rosenthal Writer in Residence at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. She was selected as a Senior Research Fellow at HKS for Spring 2020.^[8]

Educated: A Memoir[edit]

In 2018, Penguin Random House published Westover's Educated: A Memoir, which tells the story of her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her family's rigid ideology and isolated life.^{[5][9][10][11][12]} The coming-of-age story was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and was positively reviewed by the New York Times,^[13][14]The Atlantic Monthly,^[15]USA Today,^[16]Vogue,^[17][18] and The Economist,^[19] among others.

As of February 2020, Educated has spent two years in hardcover on the New York Times bestseller list^[20] and is being translated into 45 languages.^[21] The book was voted the #1 Library Reads pick by American librarians, and in August 2019, it had been checked out more frequently than any other book through all New York Public Library's 88 branches.^[22] As of December 2020, Educated has sold more than 8 million copies.^[23]

Through their attorney, the family has disputed some elements of Westover's book, including her suggestion that her father may have bipolar disorder and that her mother may have suffered a brain injury that resulted in reduced motor skills. Blake Atkin, a lawyer representing Westover's parents, claims that Educated creates a distorted picture of the parents.^[24] Westover has not responded directly to these claims, but according to the book's acknowledgements, prior to publication it was professionally fact-checked by Ben Phelan of This American Life and GQ.^[25][26][27]

Awards and recognition[edit]

Westover's book earned her several awards and accolades:

• Named the Book of the Year by the American Booksellers Association
• Finalist for the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle
• Finalist for the Autobiography Award from the National Book Critics Circle
• Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography
• Finalist for PEN/America's Jean Stein Award
• Finalist for the American Booksellers Association Audiobook of the Year Award
• Finalist for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great Writers Award
• One of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2018
• Long-listed for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence
• Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Autobiography
• Winner of the Audie Award for Autobiography/Memoir
• Alex Award from the American Library Association
• Named an 'Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults' by the American Library Association
• Amazon Editors' pick for the Best Book of 2018^[28]
• Apple's Best Memoir of the Year
• Audible's Best Memoir of the Year
• Hudson Group Best Book of the Year
• President Barack Obama's pick for summer reading and his Favorite Books of the Year list^[29]
• Bill Gates's Holiday Reading list^[30][31]
• Westover chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019
• Educated named one of the Best Books of the year by The Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Post, The Skimm, Bloomberg, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Publishers Weekly, The Library Journal, Book Riot, and the New York Public Library.^{[citation needed]}
• Featured speaker, Seattle Arts & Lectures, 2019 [1]
• New York Historical Society Women in Public Life Award
• James Joyce Award
• Evans Handcart Award

References[edit]

1. ^Whitworth, Damian (February 17, 2018). 'Review: Educated by Tara Westover — from the Mormon boondocks to a Cambridge PhD'. The Times.
2. ^'The 10 Best Books of 2018'. The New York Times. 2018-12-05. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-08.
3. ^'Tara Westover: The 100 Most Influential People of 2019'. TIME. Retrieved 2019-04-18.
4. ^Bureau, U. S. Census. 'U.S. Census website'. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
5. ^ ^abEducated by Tara Westover | PenguinRandomHouse.com.
6. ^'Tara Westover (2018) on her first book, Educated: A Memoir, the 'life of the mind', and the transformative power of education'. The Fountain. No. 25. Trinity College, Cambridge. Summer 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2018 – via issuu.
7. ^Westover, Tara (2014). The Family, Morality and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813-1890. University of Cambridge.
8. ^Shorenstein Center. 'Spring 2020 Shorenstein Fellows'. shorensteincenter.org/. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
9. ^Cryer, Dan (23 February 2018). ''Educated' review: Tara Westover's memoir of a childhood with religious extremists, and finding her own voice (book review)'. Newsday. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
10. ^Davies, Review by Helen (2018-02-04). 'Book review: Educated by Tara Westover'. ISSN0140-0460. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
11. ^Ciabattari, Jane. 'Ten books to read in February'. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
12. ^'The 50 most anticipated books of 2018'. EW.com. 2017-12-26. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
13. ^MacGillis, Alec (2018-03-01). 'She Didn't Own a Birth Certificate or Go to School. Yet She Went On to Earn a Ph.D.'The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
14. ^Jordan, Tina (2018-03-02). 'Spinning a Brutal Off-the-Grid Childhood into a Gripping Memoir'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
15. ^Hulbert, Ann (2018-02-13). ''Educated' Is a Brutal, One-of-a-Kind Memoir'. The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
16. ^'In 'Educated,' the inspiring story of an isolated young woman determined to learn'. USA TODAY. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
17. ^'Tara Westover on Turning Her Off-the-Grid Life Into a Remarkable Memoir'. Vogue. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
18. ^'Tara Westover's Educated Is Already Being Hailed as the 'Next Hillbilly Elegy''. Vogue. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
19. ^'A riveting memoir of a brutal upbringing (book review)'. The Economist. 15 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
20. ^'Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - The New York Times'. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
21. ^'Curtis Brown'. www.curtisbrown.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
22. ^Licea, Melkorka (2019-10-26). 'Here are New Yorkers' most checked-out library books by borough'. New York Post. Retrieved 2020-02-22.
23. ^'Barclay agency profile'. barclayagency.com. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
24. ^Alexander, Neta (2018-07-03). 'The Author Who Only Found Out About the Holocaust in College: How Tara Westover Became 'Educated''. Haaretz. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
25. ^Westover, Tara (2018). Educated : a memoir. New York. p. 331. ISBN978-0-399-59050-4. OCLC986898537.
26. ^Glass, Ira (2020-05-04). 'We Just Won the First Ever Pulitzer Prize for Audio Journalism!'. This American Life. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
27. ^'Benjamin Phelan - Bio, latest news and articles'. GQ. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
28. ^'The Best Books of 2018'. www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2019-01-08.
29. ^Cummings, William (August 20, 2018). ''Factfulness' and 'Educated' among the titles on Obama's summer reading list'. USA Today. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
30. ^Elkins, Kathleen (2018-12-03). 'Bill Gates says these are the 5 best books he read in 2018'. CNBC. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
31. ^Gates, Bill. 'Educated is even better than you've heard'. gatesnotes.com. Retrieved 2019-01-08.

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Tara Westover

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tara Westover.

• Tara Westover, After Words,C-SPAN

Tara Westover was raised by fundamentalist Mormon survivalists in the mountains of Idaho. She never attended school and was home-schooled only when there was time after work in the family salvage and herbalist business. In her memoir Educated, she tells the story of how at 16 she taught herself enough math and grammar to get accepted into Brigham Young University and went on to receive her PhD from the University of Cambridge, at the cost of her relationship with her family. The following is an excerpt from the book.

American history was held in an auditorium named for the prophet Joseph Smith. I’d thought American history would be easy because Dad had taught us about the Founding Fathers — I knew all about Washington, Jefferson, Madison. But the professor barely mentioned them at all, and instead talked about “philosophical underpinnings” and the writings of Cicero and Hume, names I’d never heard.

In the first lecture, we were told that the next class would begin with a quiz on the readings. For two days I tried to wrestle meaning from the textbook’s dense passages, but terms like “civic humanism” and “the Scottish Enlightenment” dotted the page like black holes, sucking all the other words into them. I took the quiz and missed every question.

That failure sat uneasily in my mind. It was the first indication of whether I would be okay, whether whatever I had in my head by way of education was enough. After the quiz, the answer seemed clear: it was not enough. On realizing this, I might have resented my upbringing but I didn’t. My loyalty to my father had increased in proportion to the miles between us. On the mountain, I could rebel. But here, in this loud, bright place, surrounded by gentiles disguised as saints, I clung to every truth, every doctrine he had given me. Doctors were Sons of Perdition. Homeschooling was a commandment from the Lord.

Download fonts to microsoft word mac. Failing a quiz did nothing to undermine my new devotion to an old creed, but a lecture on Western art did.

The classroom was bright when I arrived, the morning sun pouring in warmly through a high wall of windows. I chose a seat next to a girl in a high-necked blouse. Her name was Vanessa. “We should stick together,” she said. “I think we’re the only freshmen in the whole class.”

The lecture began when an old man with small eyes and a sharp nose shuttered the windows. He flipped a switch and a slide projector filled the room with white light. The image was of a painting. The professor discussed the composition, the brushstrokes, the history. Then he moved to the next painting, and the next and the next.

Then the projector showed a peculiar image, of a man in a faded hat and overcoat. Behind him loomed a concrete wall. He held a small paper near his face but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at us. I opened the picture book I’d purchased for the class so I could take a closer look. Something was written under the image in italics but I couldn’t understand it. It had one of those black-hole words, right in the middle, devouring the rest. I’d seen other students ask questions, so I raised my hand.

The professor called on me, and I read the sentence aloud. When I came to the word, I paused. “I don’t know this word,” I said. “What does it mean?”

There was silence. Not a hush, not a muting of the noise, but utter, almost violent silence. No papers shuffled, no pencils scratched.

The professor’s lips tightened. “Thanks for that,” he said, then returned to his notes.

I scarcely moved for the rest of the lecture. Completely free data recovery software for mac. I stared at my shoes, wondering what had happened, and why, whenever I looked up, there was always someone staring at me as if I was a freak. Of course I was a freak, and I knew it, but I didn’t understand how they knew it.

When the bell rang, Vanessa shoved her notebook into her pack. Then she paused and said, “You shouldn’t make fun of that. It’s not a joke.” She walked away before I could reply.

I stayed in my seat until everyone had gone, pretending the zipper on my coat was stuck so I could avoid looking anyone in the eye. Then I went straight to the computer lab to look up the word “Holocaust.”

I don’t know how long I sat there reading about it, but at some point I’d read enough. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I suppose I was in shock, but whether it was the shock of learning about something horrific, or the shock of learning about my own ignorance, I’m not sure. I do remember imagining for a moment, not the camps, not the pits or chambers of gas, but my mother’s face. A wave of emotion took me, a feeling so intense, so unfamiliar, I wasn’t sure what it was. It made me want to shout at her, at my own mother, and that frightened me.

I searched my memories. In some ways the word “Holocaust” wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. Perhaps Mother had taught me about it, when we were picking rosehips or tincturing hawthorn. I did seem to have a vague knowledge that Jews had been killed somewhere, long ago. But I’d thought it was a small conflict, like the Boston Massacre, which Dad talked about a lot, in which half a dozen people had been martyred by a tyrannical government. To have misunderstood it on this scale — five versus six million — seemed impossible.

I found Vanessa before the next lecture and apologized for the joke. I didn’t explain, because I couldn’t explain. I just said I was sorry and that I wouldn’t do it again. To keep that promise, I didn’t raise my hand for the rest of the semester.

From the book Educated by Tara Westover. Copyright © 2018 by Tara Westover. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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