October Not Fiction Book Discussions

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, one of the most read and discussed books of the year, asks us to consider what it means to be educated.

Born to a family of Mormons who embrace a survivalist worldview and distrust, among other things, public schools, Westover had little formal education of any kind as a child. She worked for her mother's herbal supplement and midwifing businesses and her father's scrapping business until a brother who had left home for college encouraged her to study for the ACT. Westover passed and was accepted to Brigham Young University at the age of 16. Westover performed brilliantly academically, and ultimately earned graduate degrees from Cambridge and a fellowship at Harvard. Yet Westover's steepest learning curve was less academic than social, cultural, and emotional as she outgrew her family's world on Buck's Peak in rural Idaho.

What do you think? Have you ever outgrown a world or worldview? What sparked that learning curve? Did you have to make difficult choices? In pursuit of her academic and personal education, Westover endured active opposition from her father, demeaning abuse from her brother, mixed messages from her mother, a limiting view of women's place in the world from her religion, and, initially, suffered from limited cultural intelligence. Why do you think she was able to persevere? What personal qualities contributed to her success? Ironically, did those same qualities also limit her in some ways? Crucial to most people's education are the mentors and guides we meet along the way. Who do you think was important to Westover's education? In addition to books and lectures, we also learn from experiences. Which life experiences had the most impact on Westover? At Cambridge, Westover attends a lecture about Isaiah Berlin's concept of negative versus positive liberty, a concept reiterated to her in the lyrics of a Bob Marley song. How did these two very different texts help Westover to understand her education? Westover wrote her memoir at a relatively young age, close in time and emotion to the experiences depicted. Why do you think she chose to write it at this time of her life? Do you think it would differ if she wrote it at a later point in her life? How?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.