I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
Tara WestoverRead
Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the struggle of belonging within family and community, highlighting the conflict between personal beliefs and familial ties.
Tara Westover's quote illustrates the complex relationship one can have with family and society when personal beliefs diverge from collective norms. It conveys a sense of isolation and the difficulty of balancing familial loyalty against the backdrop of differing values and faiths, emphasizing that there is often little room for nuance in such stark divisions.
Themes
FamilyBeliefsCommunityConflictIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a community event addressing the importance of individuality within the family structure.
More from Tara Westover
All quotes →I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.
Tara WestoverRead
We think love is noble, and in some ways, it is. But in some ways, it isn't. Love is just love. And sometimes people do terrible things because of it.
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I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.
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I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.
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We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.
Tara WestoverRead
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