Educated, by Tara Westover

Holy moly, this one was a rollercoaster.

At the end of the memoir, I did get a sense of why education is so important as the title would suggest, but that wasn’t why this memoir stood out to me.

“it’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you”

Tara Westover, Educated

The quote above really stood out to me as I was reading the memoir. I heavily related to that quote. Tara, as a child, was essentially brainwashed and warped into her father’s schizophrenic world. The whole family gave into this world of chaos.

Okay, now this is going to be a little more personal as I dive into why I felt personally attached to the memoir. I am a Chinese-born Canadian, and I’ve always felt a jarring contrast between the two cultures. The contrast is even more poignant as my parents are very traditional. How does this relate to Educated? Well, one particular Chinese value originating from Confucian values is filial piety. In a nutshell, filial piety refers to the duty and obligation of a child to respect and honour their parent/elders. To my parents, this also means paying respects in the form of money. I have been and still am constantly struggling between giving my parents anything they want and standing my own ground to protect my individualism.

I felt the same struggle in Tara Westover’s Educated. We’re supposed to love the family given to us, but sometimes giving them all the power over us is not the right thing to do. It’s hard.

Anyways, Educated effectively illustrates how important education is to self-creation instead of just being what we were prescribed to be. I believe this is extremely relevant in the face of censorship laws around the world now. Without access to certain areas of knowledge, these people don’t truly have the freedom to be who they want to be. Without the proper education on censored subjects, so many paths are barred off. I think that this is extremely unfair and _Educated _does a good job in showcasing this problem.

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