Educated by Tara Westover is the May 2018 selection for the PBS NewsHour—New York Times “Now Read This” Book Club.
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover did not go to the doctor or attend school—until she taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.
Westover told the New York Times: “I wrote the book I wished I could have given to myself when I was losing my family. When I was going through that experience, I became aware of how important stories are in telling us how to live—how we should feel, when we should feel proud, when we should feel ashamed. I was losing my family, and it seemed to me that there were no stories for that—no stories about what to do when loyalty to your family was somehow in conflict with loyalty to yourself. And forgiveness. I wanted a story about forgiveness that did not conflate forgiveness with reconciliation, or did not treat reconciliation as the highest form of forgiveness. In my life, I knew the two might always be separate. I didn’t know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that I could forgive, regardless.”
Listen to this sample, and buy the Educated audiobook on Libro.fm to support your local, independent bookstore with your purchase!
You can submit questions about Educated to the Now Read This Book Club Facebook Group. Are you reading the book with your friends? Use these discussion questions to get your conversations started.