I watched a few videos with Tara Westover. She was interviewed by Bill Gates and Ellen DeGeneres among many other interesting people. Bill Gates wanted to talk to her about her views on education, Ellen wanted to discuss how she overcame her abusive relationship with her brother and her family's rejection. I suspect that Westover never thought about the fact that her very personal experiences were going to be dissected in front of millions of people.
Here is an exchange between Westover and Oprah that I found which captures one of the most important themes of the book.
From Oprah's podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/
(43 minutes and 8 seconds into this podcast. )
(43 minutes and 8 seconds into this podcast. )
OPRAH: So often in the book you write about the thoughts in your head about actions, decisions you struggle with because they were against your father's teaching. You say that you knew your learning was unnatural.
Oprah reads from the book: This knowledge like so much of my self knowledge had come from me in the voice of people I knew and people that I love. All through the years that voice has been with me whispering, wondering, worrying that I was not right, that my dreams were perversions. That voice had many tempers and many tones. So often it was my father's voice but more often it was my own.
OPRAH: so in your everyday life do you still hear those teachings in your father's voice?
TARA: I think we all do, and that's what's deceptive about the ideas we get from other people. We feel like they're our ideas. My dad's version of history didn't feel like history I learned, it felt like history.
Westover is so extraordinary because she transcended the dominant narrative of her family and culture to find who she really was.
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