"...Refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated to me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs."
Tara Westover's memoir tells a compelling story--a story in which she was not allowed to be "brainwashed" by the government and attend public school, yet teaches herself algebra and trigonometry in order to pass the ACT test to get into college.
Her story is not my story--not by far--but there are strains that resonate with those of us whose stories we've not dared to write, or those who have cleaned up our stories and omitted the awful parts.
Tara was born in 1986, received no formal education until she was seventeen, and was dominated by the paranoia of her father who forced her to work on dangerous machinery in a junkyard when she was just a child. She's studied at Cambridge and received a Ph.D. from Harvard. Her most impressive accomplishment may be the courage to put her voice and story on the page in this unforgettable and powerful book.
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