Educated: A Memoir

Author：Tara Westover

Publisher: Random House (2018/2/20)

精裝: 352 pages

Language: 英語

ISBN: 0399590501

EAN: 9780399590504

Product Dimensions: 16.4 x 2.8 x 24 cm 

書籍簡介

Tara初次踏入教室時已經17歲了。她出生於愛達荷州偏僻山區中的摩門教集聚地，他們是所謂倖存主義一族，相信摩門教啟示錄中末日降臨的説法，拒絕教育，拒絕現代醫學。Tara自出生以來沒看過醫生也不打疫苗，甚至沒有出生證。Tara的母親作過接生婆，有些生育和草藥知識。全家賴以生存的，是父親的廢舊汽車部件回收站，六個孩子從小就在回收站幫工。

Tara成長在這樣一個與世隔絕的環境中，從未受過教育，家中兄長出現暴力傾向，也無人干涉。 直到她另外一個哥哥獨自離家上大學，並告訴了她大山之外的世界，Tara下定決心，要努力過上新的生活。她自學數學、語法、科學，參加ACT考試，並被楊百翰大學錄取。在那裏，她學習了心理學、哲學、政治和歷史。對知識的渴求徹底改變了Tara，帶她走入哈佛、劍橋，也讓她和家鄉親人越走越遠。

Educated記錄了Tara一步步探索自我，叩問自我，終和自己和解的過程，也真正揭示了知識和教育的力量。

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father’s junkyard.

Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent.

When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing one’s closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

作者簡介

Tara Westover was born in Idaho in 1986. She received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Educated is her first book.