A day's dream, I am wide awake. - Coorg

Educated - The Memoir By Tara Westover.

"A heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir."
- USA TODAY

The book Educated, is about Tara Westover the author herself who lived in Idaho a state in the north west of USA, she never attended school until she was 17. Till then, she and her siblings taught themselves. Her parents didn't believe in the government systems, they never went to the hospitals, the children were born at home with the help of midwives and treated with herbal medicines when injured. There were no birth certificates issued nor there were much documents of the family's existence. Tara was the youngest of her 7 siblings, one of her brothers Tyler, urged her to clear the entrance exam to get her enrolled in the school, after he witnessed a horrible incident of abuse that happened in the house by her another brother.

What I see through this book?

I saw courage in this young girl to stand out against the will of her loved ones. It is not even that there were influential friends around where she got the ideas, neither was there an exposure of the social media to come across the world outside of theirs. While children of her age went to school, Tara spent 17 years of her life preparing for the end of the world with her survivalist family. Her family armed themselves with ammunition, fuel and food. Her environment since childhood had been influenced by her parents, she shared that there was no distinction between her dad's mind and hers. It is true, as young children our parents are the role models whom we look up to. There's an instance where she visits her grandmother who shows her the differences of her lifestyle, which was as simple as washing hands with soap after using the washroom, she gets by her grandma and does so, but when Tara's dad comes to take her back home, she slips back comfortably into her father's ways of  thinking that such a habit of the hand washing is not required to be taken back home, and why should she, as that's how it has been all the years and an introduction to a new change seems difficult, specially when your loved ones disapprove of it.  

After Tyler urges Tara to clear the entrance exam, you get to witness the might of this brave little girl, who would wake up early morning to prepare for her entrance exam, she buys trigonometry book to teach herself, before she gets occupied in her dad's metal scrap yard and stewing herbs for her mother. Without school, she taught herself  to clear her exam and got enrolled in the school, which otherwise without schooling one would have been scrambling through, but then, her parents taught her that one can teach oneself anything one wants to, which kept her going to teach herself well enough to crack the exam. Money was the limitation, but she manages to overcome that as well. It was one of the toughest decisions to take the scholarship as doing so, was totally against her parent’s ideology, but this happens to be an important turn in her educational journey. As her fees are now funded, she does not have to worry about the money and now, she gets to pay attention to her studies, like the way she puts across that the professors and the teachings during the lectures come into focus. Back then, she’s mentioned about being observant of the change she sees in her mother, when she was becoming a successful mid wife and herbalist, who started earning the money in the house. Tara saw in her an authority, that she had never seen before, her mother decides to get a telephone connection which otherwise would have required the approval of her father. Her mother was no more apologizing for not having the makeup on. This thoughtfulness of Tara itself shows that she has an innate wisdom, and this wisdom leads her to break all the conditioning and barriers to explore the other side of the world. 

She's mentioned about how astonished she was to learn the history, as the version of history she learnt back home from her father was totally different. To know the truths, to know what she was kept a bay, to get to explore her own self , and be able to strongly stand by the decisions she made even when it doesn't comply with that of her family's. She has got herself to what it means to be "Educated".

Graduating herself from Brigham Young University, to securing a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an M Phil from Trinity College, Cambridge, and a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014.

Tara's 1st book has earned the place amongst the 10 best books of 2018 (The New York Times). Well I got to know about this book as I went through the review for " 5 books I Loved in 2018" by Bill Gates. 

There are many parts of Tara to be connected to. The tremendous courage to endure the pain that which is inflicted by the loved ones is deeply felt. The journey of Tara’s education was about being curious to know the truths that contradicted with what she was told since her childhood. It was her journey from being enclosed in the darkness of ignorance, to enlighten her life with knowledge. The journey costed her a wrecked relationship with her family and going through bouts of panic attack. In all the chaos Tara has gracefully expressed the delicate intricacies of being torn apart, specially when it comes to taking a stand for oneself, in spite of all the consequences one knows that one will have to face, and most importantly to be at peace with oneself.

A very well written page turner memoir, a powerful testimony of self-empowerment through education.