Coming-of-Age Book Club

Bill Gates rated Educated with 5/5 stars and said:

"I thought I was pretty good at teaching myself—until I read Tara Westover’s memoir Educated. Her ability to learn on her own blows mine right out of the water. I was thrilled to sit down with her recently to talk about the book.

Tara was raised in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about the government. He believed doomsday was coming, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible. As a result, she didn’t step foot in a classroom until she was 17, and major medical crises went untreated (her mother suffered a brain injury in a car accident and never fully recovered)."

Educated is a coming of age memoir dealing with topics of family, religion, education, abuse, resilience, feminism, adversity, and overall self-realization. As the narrative takes place within Tara Westover's formative years, the memoir is especially relatable to teenagers who are searching for their own identity, education, and future.

Overall, my objective for this class is to study the life issues that Educated touches on, as well as the mechanics of the story. Non-fiction often gets the reputation as a less creative artform, as it seems the characters and the story are a given. In class we will discuss how to utilize literary elements in a non-fiction story in order to connect with the audience, as Tara Westover has done in Educated. We will examine how she artfully pieces together the events and characters in her life so that we are drawn into her world and her story.

I expect that learners will come to class prepared to discuss Educated. In order for learners to be thoroughly prepared, they will need their own copy of Educated and to keep up with the readings. The class will be split up into 4 weeks of assigned readings with roughly 70-100 pages per week. 

The course will follow the schedule:

Week 1: Introduction to non-fiction, especially the memoir genre. 
Week 2: Discussion of assigned reading from the prologue to chapter 7.
Week 3: Discussion of assigned reading from chapter 8 to chapter 16.
Week 4: Discussion of assigned reading from chapter 17 to chapter 29.
Week 5: Discussion of assigned reading from chapter 30 to chapter 40.