Tara Westover Discusses Education, Community and Self Perspective at BABEL

By: Adam Kozman, Assistant Copy Editor

The Just Buffalo Literary Center hosted Tara Westover for their BABEL presentation on March 26, and I was fortunate enough to be able to go. Westover is a New York Times No. 1 bestselling author for her memoir “Educated,” which was ranked as one of the top 10 books of 2018. She was also a finalist for many prestigious awards, such as the National Book Critics Circle Awards and PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, was named as one of 100 most influential people of 2019 and received the National Humanities Medal in 2023.

Westover grew up in rural Idaho as the youngest of seven siblings. Her memoir covers her upbringing in the town of Clifton under her Mormon survivalist parents who were suspicious of public schools, doctors and the federal government, so growing up, she was not allowed to go to school or even receive formal medical treatment. Her and her siblings were homeschooled, and never wrote an essay, received a lecture or even completed a test. Her older brother, Tyler, whom she has a close relationship with taught her how to read and write.

Tyler tutored himself to get a good score on the ACT and would eventually enroll at Brigham Young University (BYU). Naturally, Westover wanted to follow suit. In her speech, she reflected on how her love for music influenced her eventual pursuit of education. Growing up in the environment she did, she became extremely fond of church hymns, as that was all she had at her disposal. She found escape from the long hours working at her parent’s junkyard in music. Her older brother Tyler owned a boombox and helped expose her to more music, but even then she still was likened to church hymns, and enjoyed singing along. Her passion for singing led to dreams of making her own music, and it was that want to make music that motivated her to learn to read and write and further educate herself. Her love for music has stayed throughout her life, she said, even today: in her free time, she sings in a band.

Westover’s musical dreams fueled her to follow after Tyler. She tutored herself, took the ACT and received a good enough score to enroll at BYU. In her speech, she spoke on her struggles adjusting to college coursework after never receiving a formal education, however she acknowledged the unity of the Mormon community, especially with how it aided in her success during undergraduate studies and had a lasting effect on her graduate endeavors at Cambridge. She said that it is much more important to build resilient communities than individuals. A resilient community brings people together and raises them up while a resilient individual stands alone – and she benefited from that resilient community. 

Westover spoke further on this point about how many things have been destroyed and lost through violence and disagreement; she says that now it is time to start building. She said we have to find some way to be connected in a world where we are so connected that everyone is isolated, to take a couple steps back, reassess and find ways to make communities resilient to build back what has been destroyed, and then the floor was opened for her to receive questions from the crowd. Ushers came up and down the aisles with notecards for those who wished to ask questions.

There were plenty of questions, many of which went unanswered, but among those that are fresh in my mind, a lot of them asked about the process of reflection, on how she sees her past self and past friends, and what her past self would think of her now. In the process of writing her memoir, she had to spend a lot of time reflecting on past experiences, actions and relationships, and it was with these questions where she spoke most extensively. She addressed the common act of self-betrayal and how ruinous it is; the best thing you can do for yourself is to live in reality. She referenced Joan Didion multiple times by saying that you want to “be on nodding terms with your past self,” not to be best friends or strangers, but rather somewhere in the middle because how you feel about yourself isn’t objective. “Objectivity is learned,” she says, “so unlearn it.” There is an importance to self-forgiveness, she told the crowd, remember a time when you made a mistake and give them forgiveness, because how you treat yourself is how you treat others. If you are patient and true with yourself, then you are patient and true to others. 

There was a lot to take away from this presentation, and I feel there was no way I could do all of it justice, so the best thing to do is check out “Educated,” and maybe in the future, her new book that she hinted at the end of her talk. 

The final BABEL author event of the season is on Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Kleinhans Music Hall with Imani Perry, the author of the National Book Award winning “South to America.”