Notes

Educated is an autobiography by Tara Westover that narrates the life of a girl who knows nothing but what she has been told by her father. Tara comes from a family of Mormon's. Her father believes that the government is Illuminati and that school was a ploy to distract children from God. Four out of the seven children have no birth certificate, no medical records, and no school records because they have never set foot in a classroom. She spent her childhood preparing for the world to end. Tara writes, " I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, waiting for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood." (pg. xii) Tara's mother was an illegal midwife. She grew up having an ordinary life, her father (Tara's grandfather) was a mailman and her mother was one of the best seamstress in the city. Tara's father, on the other hand, lived on a farm where his mother worked at the farm bureau in town and he spent his days working in the mountain. The first few chapters of Educated give an insightful introduction to help the reader understand the world Tara lives in.