11/05/2020
It was a closely fought race, but the winner of the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir and Autobiography is Tara Westover's powerful debut, Educated.
The story of Westover’s journey from a childhood in the mountains of Idaho, the daughter of survivalist parents who never sent her to school, to gaining a Ph.D. from Cambridge, beat Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which came in second. Last year’s winner in this category was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s What Happened.
At times harrowing and emotional, Educated charts Westover’s girlhood working in her father’s dangerous junkyard and helping her herbalist mother, never seeing a classroom or doctor. Constantly prepping for the End of Days, she was in thrall to an older, violently abusive brother and parents who told her she had been “taken by Lucifer” when she tried to speak out. As a teenager, she began to educate herself, eventually attending Brigham Young University, then Cambridge and Harvard. But finding herself through education would also cost her dearly; after a mental breakdown, Westover was forced to accept that to live the life she wanted she must sever ties with the parents she still loves.
Educated, which has spent 40 weeks on The New York Times' bestseller list, has resonated deeply with readers. On Goodreads, it has an average of 4.47 stars and more than 109,000 ratings. We caught up with a thrilled Westover, 32, at her home in New York just after the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award polls closed. She told Goodreads contributor Catherine Elsworth what the award means to her, why she thinks Educated's themes of family obligation and self-invention have connected with so many, and what’s next for her.
