Tara Westover is a prominent American author who writes memoirs, essays, and historical works.
Educated, a memoir written by Tara Westover and published in 2018, debuted at number one on the list of best-selling books in The New York Times. The book also advanced to the final round of competition for a number of important national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America’s Jean Stein Book Award, and two National Book Critics Circle Awards.
The New York Times has recognized Educated as one of the top 10 best books published in 2018. According to Time magazine, Westover is one of the 100 most influential persons in the world in 2019. Let’s find out more about her, like her husband and her net worth.
Tara Westover Husband: Is She Married?
Drew tied the knot with Tara Westover. Despite the fact that she kept the details of her romantic relationships private, Tara revealed in her memoir that she had a lover named Drew. As a direct consequence of this, her best-selling autobiography leaves readers wanting more.
In 2018, Penguin Random House published Westover’s memoir titled Educated: A Memoir. In it, she discusses her struggle to match her yearning for knowledge and independence with her family’s rigorous worldview and her upbringing in isolation. Educated: A Memoir was written by Westover.
The coming-of-age story was the first book to reach the top spot on the bestseller list published by The New York Times. The book also garnered positive reviews from publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, Vogue, and The Economist.
Educated has been translated into 45 different languages as of February 2020, and it has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover books for the past two years.
The book was chosen by American librarians as their top pick for Library Reads, and as of the month of August 2019, all 88 branches of the New York Public Library have checked it out more frequently than any other book in their collections. As of the end of the year 2020, sales of the book Educated totaled more than 8 million copies.
Through their attorney, the family has taken issue with a variety of aspects of Westover’s book, including her assertions that her mother may have suffered from brain damage that limited her motor skills and that her father may have bipolar disorder. Both of these claims have been contested by the family.
Blake Atkin, who represents Westover’s parents in legal matters, maintains that the documentary Educated presents an inaccurate picture of the family. Westover has not responded directly to these charges; nevertheless, the acknowledgments section of the book states that Ben Phelan of This American Life and GQ checked the book for accuracy before it was published.
Tara Westover Age & Ethnicity- Where Is She From?
Tara Westover was born on September 30th, 1986, making her 35 years old currently. In a similar vein, her ethnicity is a causal factor.
Westover was the seventh child to be born to Mormon survivalist parents in Clifton, Idaho. He was the youngest of the seven children. She is the younger sibling of one brother and has five older brothers. Her parents spread false information to the medical community, public schools, government organizations, and medical facilities.
She was born in the comfort of her own home by a midwife, and she was never examined by a doctor or other medical expert during her whole life. She did not receive a birth certificate until she was nine years old because she was not registered for one until that age.
The patriarch of the family was adamantly opposed to any of his children receiving legitimate medical attention. Even when they sustained life-threatening wounds, the children relied solely on their mother for all of their medical care, as she was trained in herbalism and various other alternative forms of treatment.
The mother of the children provided some of the children’s education while she was at home with them. According to Westover, her older brother was the one who taught her how to read, and she educated herself on the scriptures of the Latter-day Saints. However, she was never required to take a test, compose an essay, or attend a lecture. There were not a great deal of textbooks in their house.
Tara Westover Net Worth In 2022
It has been stated that Tara Westover has a net worth that is greater than one million dollars. Her successful writing career is the key contributor to her family’s financial well-being.
As a teenager, Westover developed a strong desire to escape his home community and pursue higher education elsewhere. She made an investment in textbooks and engaged in independent study in order to achieve a satisfactory score on the ACT. She was accepted to Brigham Young University and awarded a scholarship, despite the fact that she did not graduate from high school.
During her first year at the university, Westover had a difficult time adjusting to both the academic atmosphere and the greater community there. After a difficult first year, she managed to pull herself together and eventually graduated with honors in 2008.
She went on to get a master’s degree from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Subsequently, she was a visiting scholar at Harvard University in the year 2010. She went back to Trinity College, which is located in Cambridge, and ultimately earned a doctorate in intellectual history there in 2014.
In 2009, while Westover was a doctoral student at Cambridge, she revealed to her parents that she had been subjected to both physical and mental abuse by an older sibling for a significant amount of time (beginning when she was 15).
Educated is a book written by Westover in 2018 in which she discusses the isolation she experienced as well as her unconventional path to and through higher education.
Tara Westover Childhood & Lifestyle
The Mormon survivalist parents of Tara Westover, Val and LaRee Westover, brought their daughter into the world on September 27, 1986 in Clifton, Idaho, in the United States. She spent her childhood between the care of her five elder brothers and her one older sister.
The Westover family embodied every definition of the word “extreme.” The principles of Mormonism played an important role in Val and LaRee’s parenting of their children. The children of Westover’s parents were given birth at home with the assistance of a midwife, were educated at home by their mother, and were eventually baptized as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was done because Westover’s parents viewed the government, doctors, hospitals, and public schools with suspicion. When Westover reached 9, she finally obtained a copy of her birth certificate.
Even in the instance of really serious injuries, Westover was never transported to a physician, nurse, or hospital for treatment. Her mother had a background in herbalism, and as a result, she gave the children at home remedies that she had prepared herself. The entire family pitched in to help out in their father’s junkyard. Since the majority of the children only had access to a small number of textbooks at home, they spent a substantial portion of their life being undereducated when it came to reading.
When Westover was 17, she enrolled for the very first time in a traditional academic institution. She did not have a high school diploma or any other type of formal education, but she nonetheless enrolled in college after leaving her father’s junkyard.
Reading was something that Westover learned from one of her older brothers. In later years, she became knowledgeable in the scriptures of the church that her family had always attended. Her mother and her older sister, Valaree, run an essential oils business together. Her mother also works there.
Tara Westover Education
As Tara Westover approached her teenage years, she gradually developed the desire to further her education by going to college and eventually earning a degree. She started studying algebra and trigonometry on her own, with the help of the textbooks that she had acquired before to beginning her preparation for the ACT, which is an entrance exam for colleges.
Despite the fact that she did not have a high school diploma, she performed exceptionally well on the admissions test and was awarded a scholarship to attend Brigham Young University.
The first year of college proved to be very difficult for her. Due to the fact that everything was brand new to her, she had a hard time keeping up with the rest of the students in terms of the official training they were receiving. Despite this, she put in a lot of effort and was able to graduate with honors in 2008.
Tara Westover received a Gates Cambridge scholarship that allowed her to continue her education at Trinity College, which is part of the University of Cambridge. During the academic year of 2010, she attended Harvard University as a visiting fellow. In 2014, she completed her dissertation for her doctorate in intellectual history. The Family, Morality, and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813–1890 was the title of her doctoral thesis.
Tara Westover Awards & Recognitions
Westover was included on the list of the 100 most important people in the world by Time magazine for the year 2019.
During their time at the Shorenstein Center of the Harvard Kennedy School, Westover served as a “Rosenthal Writer in Residence.” In the year 2020, the university promoted her to the position of senior research fellow.
In 2019, she was one of the featured speakers at the Seattle Arts & Lectures event.
