Tara Westover Conference Presentation: Reconciling with a Traumatic Childhood
Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. An older brother taught her to read, and after that her education was erratic and haphazard, with most of her days spent working in her father’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that first encounter with education she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She received an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009 and in 2014 was awarded a PhD in history. In 2018, she published her memoir, Educated, which explores her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her desire to be loyal to her family.
Through a discussion moderated by Dr. Jude Smith Rachele, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Howard Center and CEO of Abundant Sun, Westover will discuss her memoir about her experiences growing up in poverty and isolated from much of society with survivalist parents who were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, schools, and the government. She will discuss her view that her father may be bipolar, her mother may have suffered a brain injury, and that her brother was abusive toward her. Their paranoid and controlling behavior presented exceptional challenges and she will reflect on the ways these issues impacted her own mental health and well-being. She will share how the conditions of her youth and upbringing shaped her life experience and how, in spite of never attending school as a child, she navigated her way into college and later to graduate school.
Full Bio:
Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. An older brother taught her to read, and after that her education was erratic and haphazard, with most of her days spent working in her father’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that first encounter with education she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She received an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009 and in 2014 was awarded a PhD in history.
In 2018, she published her memoir, Educated, which explores her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her desire to be loyal to her family. Educated was an instant commercial and critical success, debuting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the list for more than two years. It was also a finalist for a number of national awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted it the Nonfiction Book of the Year.
To date, Educated has sold more than 8 million copies and has been translated into 45 languages. President Barack Obama included Educated on his annual reading list, calling it “remarkable,” and Bill Gates listed it as one of his favorite books of the year, saying, “It’s even better than you’ve heard.” For her staggering impact, TIME Magazine named Westover one of the 100 most influential people of 2018.