This was one of the most inspiring memoirs that I have ever read. We read about Tara Westover’s personal experiences living in a very strict, radical Mormon family. It’s a very empowering book about her journey out of her prison-like life under her radical, abusive father. She talks about all of the challenges she faced as her brainwashed religious side fought against the other side of her that wanted an education and wanted to leave her home. You get to read about her journey to getting an education after not being taught much as a young girl.
Educated by Tara Westover is a gripping, emotional rollercoaster that changed my life, just a little bit. Her ability to retell events that completely changed her personality and life completely took me. I would read it for hours when I was supposed to go to bed. I would read it when I could have played on my phone. I would read it when I had any moment of free time where I could get ahold of it. If it was within my reach, I was reading it.
The Glass Castle is a memoir by journalist Jeannette Walls about her family and childhood. Her parents rejected societal norms, which was often detrimental to the Walls children but also beneficial in its own ways. Jeannett’s father was a genius who helped accelerate the education of his children, but also an alcoholic without any money management skills and constantly on the run from the bill collectors.
And We Still Rise leaves reader more knowledgeable on the current disparities of the US education system along with the desire to learn more about it. The author follows 12 students at Crenshaw in California as they lead a tremulous life balancing trauma, financial issues, and education. Although the book is meant to be centered around all 12 students, it fails to dedicate equal importance to each one. The author focuses too much on certain students and even teachers, while mostly forgetting about the rest.
Tara Westover’s autobiography, Educated, details her life growing up with survivalists in rural Idaho. Westover received no formal education until she went to college and was barred from modern society, yet she managed to earn her Ph.D. in History from Cambridge. I found this novel intriguing for the most part, but some moments felt repetitive. However, I thoroughly enjoyed Westover’s display of courage, strength, and individuality; she represents how hard work and a little bit of luck can overcome all odds.
In Enduring Freedom we get the human side of war from two perspectives. The novel shares how two people from different backgrounds react to the same events. The setting takes place mainly in Farah, Afghanistan after 9/11. Joe, a U.S.
Educated is the memoir of Tara Westover who grew up in a sheltered Mormon home in Idaho. Westover was born into a family led by the orders of her father; a man who believes in constantly preparing for the end times and keeping his children a secret from the government. As a child, Westover and her siblings were not allowed to attend school and instead forced to work at the family junkyard. When Westover was seventeen years old she taught herself the material required to take the ACT and get into college.
The Battle for Room 314 by Ed Boland, published in 2016, tells the compelling story of his year teaching in an inner-city high school in New York City. As a young man, Boland worked for Project Advance, a non-profit working to place low-income, inner-city students in elite boarding schools and eventually Ivy League universities; however, he begins to feel unfulfilled and wants to widen his impact to help more deserving students.
