Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover

Further to the theme of escaping from dark caves, I recently read Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. Educated is an absorbing read (I read it in one sitting) about Tara Westover's journey from growing up in a dysfunctional, Mormon, survivalist family to her eventual schism with her parents after breaking away to go to college. Tara is the youngest of seven children (birth order: Tony, Shawn, Tyler, Luke, Audrey, Richard, Tara), and her parents are Gene and Faye (those are the names she uses in the book; their real names are Val and Laree). She grows up on a farm on the slopes of Buck's Peak in Idaho.

Instead of going to school as a child, Tara helps her mother deliver babies and make herbal concoctions or works in dangerous conditions in her father's scrapyard. She doesn't get a birth certificate until she is nine, and then her family can't remember the exact day of her birth. She is expected to grow up to be a "good Mormon woman" -- to be subservient to her husband and father, to marry young, and to produce many children. The Westover family suffers a litany of gruesome accidents, most of them brought about by Gene's dismissal of reasonable safety considerations and his unswerving beliefs that "the angels" would protect his family and his wife would be able to heal their many injuries. As she reaches her teens, her older brother Shawn, in a classic case of projection, begins calling her a "whore" and a "slut" and becomes physically and emotionally abusive. Her parents trivialize the abuse. To escape Shawn, Tara decides to go to college and, with some advice from her brother Tyler, she prepares for the ACT. The first time she takes it, she scores 22. She retakes it, this time getting 28, which means she can go to Brigham Young University in Utah. From there, she wins a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and ends up getting a Masters and then a PhD from Cambridge University, and she also earns a fellowship to Harvard.

Her father, Gene, is clearly "off his chum". He holds many paranoid beliefs, such as that the government is out to get him, that schools exist to  lead children away from God, that doctors are evil socialist instruments of the government (he claims that choosing between his wife's herbal medicine and modern medicine is akin to choosing between God and Satan), and that the the "Days of Abomination" are coming. He rails against "the Illuminati". He stockpiles food, weapons, and gas so that the family will be prepared to defend itself against the "End of Days" and Ruby Ridge style government attacks. He predicts that Y2K will be a time of catastrophe and is crushed to be proven wrong. He occasionally enters almost catatonic states. His self-belief is absolute. He sees his opinions as facts and believes that he speaks for God. He is extremely sexist. On one occasion, he demands that Tara help him with breakfast by saying, "You're a woman, aren't you? Well, this here is a kitchen!" Tara speculates that he might have bipolar. One of her university professors, in response to Tara's essay about "an uncle" with the disorder, thinks he perhaps has schizophrenia. He has been widely "diagnosed" on the Internet as severely narcissistic.

Shawn is disturbed, dangerous, and abusive, and his mental health is not improved by a series of  major  head injuries. He has a long history of violence, aggression, and degradation of women. He physically and emotionally bullies both Tara and Audrey, her older sister, while her parents look the other way. He shoves his wife, Emily, out of their mobile home in sub-zero temperatures and brutally stabs his dog, a German shepherd, to death with a small knife.

Tara's mother, Faye, appears to be a talented woman who is under the thrall of her domineering husband. Her few fledgling efforts to spread her wings and assert herself are quickly snuffed out by the force of his personality. She, too, sustains a traumatic brain injury in one of the family's depressingly frequent accidents, and, as in many of the other cases in which a family member is hurt, she doesn't get any medical help. Gene believes doctors would be unable to help her and that she is "in God's hands". In the aftermath of the accident, Faye spends a week in the basement and is very badly bruised about the head and face. She appears confused and for months cannot remember her own children's names. For weeks, she has raccoon eyes, which indicates she may have had a serious brain injury. She is never the same after the accident. She embraces magical thinking and believes in her power to heal by transmitting energy and making herbal tinctures.

Finally Audrey and Tara agree to stage an intervention to address Shawn's problems. Faye initially indicates she is on board with the plan. Then comes the gaslighting. Faye, under pressure from Gene, who claims Tara has "no proof" of Shawn's behavior, reneges. Tara's parents visit her at Harvard, intent of enforcing her submission to their views. They invite themselves to spend a week in her dorm room (Gene in the bed, Faye on an air mattress, Tara on the floor). Gene, with fanatical conviction, believes Tara is at fault and in need of forgiveness. He insists she requires a "priesthood blessing" (with Gene, of course, being the priest), meaning that he would lay hands on her head and cast out the "evil" that caused her to openly confront Shawn's issues. Tara realizes that "what my father wanted to cast from me wasn't a demon. It was me." She refuses his blessing, thus retaining her authenticity. Her parents are shocked and leave immediately, with Gene saying he can no longer be around "the devil". Tara is devastated and suffers a breakdown. As of the writing of the book, Tara has had very little contact with either parent.

Tara returns to the UK, where Shawn harasses her with terrifying death threats. Her parents remain in denial. Gene accuses her of being hysterical; her mother claims that Tara's reality is "warped". In the midst of all this, Tara gets a message from her sister, Audrey, to whom their father has explained that Shawn has been forgiven by "the Atonement of Christ". Audrey says Tara should forgive him too. She accuses Tara of giving herself over to "the realm of Satan" and of being controlled by Lucifer.

Tara returns to Idaho for her grandmother's funeral. During the service, she realizes four of her siblings, none of whom has a high school diploma, work for her parents' company. The other three, all of whom earn PhD's, have left their childhood home and established independent lives. She reflects on her struggle to break away and establish selfhood, musing, "You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education."

Tara's memoir has caused much controversy among the friends and family of the Westovers, many of of whom resent her exposé. As a result, she has been brutally scapegoated. This onslaught has sometimes left her second-guessing her own reality testing.

The Westovers' family lawyer, Blake Atkin, issued a dismissive statement of the book, saying it should be read with a "grain of salt" and points out that three of the seven Westover siblings earned PhDs. He feels this proves that their home education was not neglected.

Two of Tara's siblings, who don't leave their names, have written negative (1-star) reviews of her book on Amazon. I have copied these below:

"Not completely false, but very little actual truth. I was there, and what I saw was was my parents, who were struggling themselves at the time to make ends meet, send there gifted daughter to College at the age of sixteen at great financial sacrifice to them. She would have us believe that she did it all herself, and that's fine, she worked hard and deserves credit. But to say that she received no help or support is total bullcrap! This family produced three Phd's, and the other siblings are all moderately successful! She has told the lies about living 'off the grid', and an abusive family, and 'survivalist family' so much that she may actually believe the crap she says; this is just sad. Our parents were not perfect. They made mistakes. All parents do. But, they did the best that they could and do not deserve all of this crap coming at them! Rather, they deserve love and gratitude."

"I was absolutely shocked and appalled when I read this book. It is full of lies and deceptions. It has very little truth and what truth it does have is blown way out of proportion. What she calls off the grid in a compound was actually house on a farm with City Water and Power. (It's inside city limits not on top of the mountain.) She portrays our dad as being anti-government anti doctors. When in reality he is just a conservative that believes in the Constitution. And because she does not believe the same way she has labeled him as such. She says that he's against doctors but half of my siblings were born in the hospital. We also were taken to the hospital for broken arms, broken legs, and hernia surgery, eye doctor appointments all were accidents not work related but swing off swing sets extra ... We went ot the dentist regularly and all that needed braces had braces. We had the choice of going to school or being homeschooled . Some of my siblings chose to go to school some of us were homeschooled. My dad believed in Freedom in his house. I could tear this book apart line upon line but to do so I'd have to rewrite the whole book. Anyone that knows this family knows this book is a complete and utter lie. There's nothing good or uplifting about this book."

These reviews include a few straw men. For example, Tara never claims in the book that she "received no help or support". In fact, she points out that her parents helped her financially while she was at BYU. She doesn't claim her home was "off the grid", although many of the reviewers mention that it was. She explains that her father wanted to be off the grid. She also states that the first four Westover children were born in the hospital, and that the kids saw a homeopathic dentist. Her father was not always opposed to doctors; he embraced that view later in life. Also, some of the hospital interventions occurred because Tara or someone outside the family took one of the family members to hospital or called an ambulance. Hence, I don't find these negative reviews credible.

Tara's brother, Tyler, gave her book a 5-star review on Amazon, but disputed some of her recollections. I think, he has since removed his review, but there is a copy here.

Tara's former boyfried, Drew, writes a very positive review (5-star) affirming Tara's version of reality.  His is perhaps the sanest voice among the reviewers and describes behaviors common to most abusive families. Here it is:

"Overcoming the gaslighting
by Drew Mecham on April 8, 2018

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm the "Drew" from this book, and although Tara and I are no longer together, I've met all of the key figures in this book on many occasions. Although I don't have as intimate a knowledge of growing up in the Westover family as a sibling would, I observed first hand everything Tara describes in the third part of the book and heard many stories about earlier events, not just from Tara, but from siblings, cousins, and her parents themselves. I find the claims of factaul inaccuracy that have come up among these reviews to be strange for two reasons. First, in a post-James Frey ("A Million Little Pieces") world, publishers are incredibly careful with memoirs and "Educated" was extensively fact checked before publication. Second, no one claiming factual innacuracy can do more than make vague claims that the book is full of lies. While every Westover sibling, as well as their neighbors and friends, will have different perspectives and different memories, it is very difficult to dispute the core facts of this book. "Educated" is about abuse, and the way in which both abusers and their enablers distort reality for the victims. It's about the importance of gaining your own understanding of the world so you're not dependent on the narratives imposed on you by others. I've heard Tara's parents attack schools and univerisities, doctors and modern medicine, but more importantly, I've seen her parents work tirelessly to create a world where Shawn's abuse was minimized or denied outright. I've seen them try to create a world where Tara was insane or possessed in order to protect a violent and unstable brother. I was with her in Cambridge when Shawn was calling with death threats, then saw her mother completely trivialize the experience. For Tara's parents, allegiance to the family is paramount, and allegiance to the family requires you to accept her father's view of the world, where violence is acceptable and asking for change is a crime."

Gene and Faye (in reality, Val and LaRee) Westover have become quite wealthy and prominent through their business, Butterfly Expressions, which deals in alternative medicine. Whether or not Tara should have exposed her already visible family to public scrutiny and criticism is not my place to judge. It is easy to find out that "Shawn"'s real name is Travis and to learn the names of his children, who will no doubt eventually read about their father in Tara's book (I suspect that they won't learn much new). Perhaps Tara's exposure will provide some protection to his wife and children. Tara's parents and Shawn all appear to victims of mental illness, traumatic brain injury, or both. Is it fair to publicize the tribulations of vulnerable and damaged people, even if they have hurt you? Again, it is not my place to judge the author's choices, but I certainly understand how frustrated she must feel by her family's denials and belittlement.

Clearly, Tara felt some sort of need to counter her voicelessness through the written word. Her father's narcissism and the strait-jacket of fundamentalist religious expectations could have crippled and permanently infantilized her. In the book, she says, "My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs." She has a strong, lyrical, educated voice, and her book has allowed it to be heard. I think her narrative is very honest, and it is not her version of reality that I question.

This meme has been floating around the Internet, but I have not seen it attributed to anyone. It refers to the narcissist's tendency to gaslight and shift blame, and I think it describes what Tara's parents did to her:

The Hymn of the Narcissist

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did ...
You deserved it.