Educated
by Tara Westover
At the beginning of the book I'm confuse to follow the daily routine of a little America girl in a rural place, helping family and running around the mountain isn't strange for me as I'm being raised from rural place as well. And it's the most fun and happy place in my life ever.
However Tara story go weird and here we are. When parents control their outfit, addicted on Oracle, reject the open education, distrust on the professional medical.. I'm shock with what's the era the Author in, and I even much more surprise Tara is just 2 years elder than me.
From a home educated to PhD and Senior Researcher, the decision of hers in 15 years end up made her to the current title and life. She fight for the studies she wants by having her time study for the ACT yet in the same time stress by parents. She lives under a tyrant's roof, and believes that she can still living fine by leaving the roof that giving her a daily meal.
Her brother, Shawn, has violent tendency, he is a monster bring up by indulgence, sort of. Sort of, because that's Shawn personality, this part of the story will not change even with parent's intervene. With Shawn's story, it grow the pace of the book, and it's a stressful and angry part of the story. I could imagine what kind of person that Tara is facing, the monster would take a knife even you show them only a frown.
From the entire story, Tara didn't initiate much idea. ACT, suggested by her brother. Report about Shawn, suggested by her sister. Phd, suggested by her Prof. However she made it by standing still on what she chosen.
Wondering what happen to Tara now, when she has this book published and expose the private and close minded of her family. In the end of the book, she has conflicts with her family and no longer accepted by her parents. With this book published, I perhaps this may even more intense.
But I trust she is living in a much more comfort live now, without any shackles. That's a relief, and that's a good move. There's a lot of people that desire to control we may met during our life time - parents, companion, and even in work. Very unfortunately, I got a tick for the last two. Due to the unhappy experience, a close friend of mine gave an impressive comments : opt out.
There is a says, the person you met is the permission you gave. Opt out, you will find your life is so much happy without them.
Quotes
- A lack of external injuries meant the damage was all internal.
- I could admire the past without being silenced by it.
- It is as if I wrote in order to forget.
- I can still fix this.
- When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into the likeness of a person.
- It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.
- You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.