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You’ve heard about it, everybody is reading it, you can’t put it down, but what do YOU make of Educated? Mark your calendar for July 19 and join us in our new fun Mini Book Discussion Series this summer and help us discuss Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, an unbelievable and true story which will never be forgotten by anybody who reads it. Come tell us what you think! |
How is a Mini Discussion different from a regular one?
1. We read the book in its entirety before the first day.
2. We've been using the ALA "Index card" approach which has worked wonderfully. In essence everybody has been given a (virtual) "index card" which they then "write" on, giving a question they'd like to see discussed or their thoughts on the book or something in the book, just whatever they would like to talk about. They email that to me (click on envelope under my name or request email address here) and if you don't have email, post your question initially and I'll save it as submitted and we'll put it like the others, in the rota, and then on July 19 I will take the cards and each day we'll consider a new one submitted in alphabetical order of the person submitting.
We address THAT question or thought for an entire day. And we can also look back, after addressing that thought, to something said before. I love this concept, and that everybody has their day.
Once the cards are finished, anybody can bring up anything they like about the book.
Should someone not want to submit a question or thought, no problem, you are as welcome as the flowers in July to participate any way you wish.
Everyone is welcome!
Good Afternoon all! I must say, I slept like a baby. This book troubled me the first time I read it, much like you mention Ginny, but the second time around, I was more or less depicting it, for discussion sake. Things did not add up in places, and so yes, my book looks like confetti with all the different colors of post-it notes hanging from it. My hubby laughed at me and said, "You have a lot of notes there."
PLEASE, don't ever feel because I have a strong point of view on anything about this book, I am trying to
sway anyone else's point or view, or
argue with anyone. According to my Ancestry.com results I got in my email this morning, I am 38% Italian descent, and we are very passionate people. I love other's different points of view. I was on the debate team in high school, my teachers loved my passion, and how I could prompt others to respond to valid points. This is where I learned to "
agree to disagree." This book has brought out emotions in me, some good, some not so good.
Love it or hate it has been mentioned several times, I can't say I feel either of those emotions, I see it more as sad, disgusting, raw, with a few glimpses of rays of light pressing through the cracks of this dark house.
I did read an interview that would help us with the house and area in Buck's Peak:
"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.)" Keep in mind, her family had a television, telephone, computer, internet service, along with AOL. She is not isolated, she is taking dance, piano lessons and has the lead role in the play Annie.
Ginny, Somehow, despite even being provided with proof she exists, without any education at all, she manages to take the ACT, pass it, go to Brigham Young University, graduate with honors, go to talk to an advisor and be advised to try for Cambridge, she can do university work and she qualifies, gets the scholarship and graduates from Cambridge University in the UK with a PhD.
AND write a bestselling book.
Surely THAT is anybody's idea of incredible achievement! And she's so young.
'Where did this severely marginalized child get the...the wherewithal, the inner strength, the dedication, the mind boggles...What enables some people to achieve as incredibly she has?'
Jonathan,
I find the answer in her using her experience and her reason.
Well, these are questions myself, and thousands of others have wondered after reading the book.
Ginny, Let's discuss the soaring positive luminous thing out of all this which she downplays as if it were normal: her rise. Her many achievements, modestly downplayed as if a matter of fact everyday accomplishment. All this and STILL she rises. How? What do you think allowed her to do this? What sort of characteristic or dedication? How did she teach herself to READ? To do advanced math which she says is like a language in itself, I loved that.
She says in the book, Tyler, her mother and even her father helped teach her, Math and Trigonometry. At the age of fifteen, she bought the ACT book and did not recognize symbols, and asked her mother,
"What is this?" "Math says her Mother." When her mother could not help her with Trig, she goes to her Dad, who apparently is way more educated than to be believed, because he solves the problem without even understanding the method to use.
What I felt was ironic throughout the whole schooling part of the book, is...she goes from not knowing how to read, not knowing Math, no public school education, to buying an ACT guidebook at the age of fifteen, shows up to take the ACT test and is confused as to the bubble fill in. She fails the first ACT test, studies again and aces it, is accepted to Brigham Young University, then being accepted to study abroad at Cambridge at the age of seventeen, then it's on to Harvard, with a lot of traveling to London, Paris, Rome and even a quick trip to the Middle Eastern desert.
We all know that it takes more than two short years to achieve these goals, all the while you are taking piano/dance classes, acting in plays, working endless hours in the junkyard, being injured, helping with the oils, assisting her mother with mid wife, and dating, unless you are Einstein. Which we know she is NOT, because after graduating two of the finest colleges in the world, earning a PhD, it takes her six months to learn how to write a book, by listening to the New Yorker fiction podcast.
I'm sorry, it's a lot for me to accept, an uneducated child, at the age of fifteen, living through the most traumatic experiences in her life, one after another, only two years, to accomplish what it takes a normal person who has gone through school teaching, years to learn. I hate to be the Debbie Downer, pessimist, unbeliever, yet again, but my common sense tells me this just does not ring true, especially when she does not want to reveal she was home schooled, at her graduation, or, give any credit to the family members who in the book she says, helped educate her.
She has indeed accomplished many goals in her short years of life, in spite of the trauma she grew up in. I will give her that, but as my wise mother always told me,
"Believe half of what you hear, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." This is indeed a best seller. But I have to ask, were we sold a false bill of goods?
Her family says, yes. Tara does not mention her brother Shawn abusing her until she is a teenager. She infers it could be, he is not comfortable with her growing up. When you think about it, her story really does not cover her younger years much. She says her older brothers seems to have grown up in a different house than she did, yet she takes liberty in the book to speak, think and feel for them. Tyler encourage her to go to school, take the ACT test, go to college, move away and helped her learn math. When he was home for a visit and Shawn was abusing Tara, he stopped it, gave her his car keys and told her to take his car and leave. She refers to Shawn as her best friend until he begins the abuse. One brother says in a review:
"She says that he's (Father) 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 to the dentist regularly and all that needed braces had braces. We had the choice of going to school or being home schooled. Some of my siblings chose to go to school some of us were home schooled."
I am just so confused! With the injuries Tara describes she and family members suffered from, the deformities, with no modern day medical treatment, only pathogenic oils to heal them, I could never imagine some of them still walking, being able to see, or even able to function in every day life, let alone go out in public, or continue to mid wife, travel to visit her in college, run a scrap yard business, or become a multi million dollar oil business, with all the head injuries, mental illness, brain damages etc.
The other point I would like to make is how Tara throughout the book gave the impression her father was the controller of everyone. Yet, her mother
sneaks behind his back, orders a telephone, buys a computer, gets internet service and connects to AOL. For a man who wants to keep his family isolated, and control them, how on earth was this possible? How did he allow Tara to take piano and dance lessons, perform in plays and date? These are things NO controlling parent would allow.
I'm beginning to feel the lawyer is right,
read it with a grain of salt.We all want a good story of someone like Tara, to come out believable, and a survivor. I am impressed with her achievements, those are undeniable.
Ginny, I'm glad to see you went from,
I could only stomach it once. I could not put it down, I was VERY glad to see her triumphant ending, but I also now can't pick it back up and desperately want to say something positive about SOMETHING in it.
to:
Ginny,
I think it's this quality of the book which lifts it into the "Love it" category.
What do you think?
I'm not there yet, and don't see me ever getting to the "Love it" category. A person's success story should not be at the expense of other family members pain and suffering, nor leave doubt with the readers, leaving gaps and unanswered questions.
PatH., I am sure you are correct in saying,
I doubt she tried to report Shawn's violence. If she had, the family uproar it would cause would have been too major not to be part of the story.
Ginny, I hope there have been, I doubt any exist. What's her physical proof? She has no physical proof of her own issues, the dog disappeared, and everybody says she is lying. Even now. And as in so many domestic violence issues what can the police do if everybody says it didn't happen. The headlines are full of why something was not reported at the time, it seems. Maybe the lesson here for all of us is report now repent later.
This reality makes me sad, because we are talking 1990's - 2000s. Whether she had proof or not, whether it was her word against the family's word. I have attended workshops, and I know that you the reporter do NOT
need proof to report, you only need to
suspect it, to report it to the authorities, and Children Services, they take it from there.
If her accounts are true, then Shawn's violence without intervention of some type of medical or therapeutic help, will continue. Mental illness does not go away, and abusers abuse for control. In her interview she says:
I hope for the sake of my brother’s wife and family that he’s mellowed and changed. Hmm..... for an
educated woman, with a PhD, and numerous therapy/counseling sessions behind her, what ever would make her think someone as violent like Shawn, would
"mellow and change"? I would have expected this
educated woman to say, I hope Shawn is getting the proper medical treatment for what ever his condition is, that causing this violent, dangerous behaviors.
Tara may have gotten
"educated" but from my view, she has
not learned yet how to apply her knowledge. You don't write a book first, become a best seller, live abroad, become wealthy, do interviews, yet not look out for the children who are left back in Buck's Peak, who could suffer at the hands of an abuser.
Report first, write the book later!