Memoir can be a powerful form, combining truth with the most personal urgency. Westover's coming of age saga tells of a prepper childhood spent far away from any school or doctor, in an isolated Mormon family in Idaho- a patriarchy of one. It was also idylic, with a mountain to themselves, horses, seven children, and the freedom roam and explore. The children, though not taught formally, were also free to roam intellectually, if they could do so on their own. The trajectory of Tara's childhood appears distinctly downhill, however, as she matures from carefree child to a girl who needs to be squeezed into the appointed role of a Mormon woman, wife, mother. The story revolves most strongly around the social pressures that she gradually comes to realize are choking her- love that curdles into control, so that time-honored roles are fulfilled, and life can go on as always.
The family eventually splits into two halves- three children who escape into the larger world, get educations, live independently, and are forced, because the family can love only those who are obedient, to break ties. And the four children who not just stay behind, but work for the family business. Tara has the most spectacular escape, getting a PhD in history at Cambridge, and using her scholarly skills to write this book which lays so much bare. She also learns a lot of philosophy ... and is no longer a Mormon.
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| Oh, how things have changed- the Oprah interview. |
But it took a lot of agony, and some therapy, to get there. The core of the book is really about physical and mental battles with the male patriarchs- the father, Gene, and the brother, Shawn. The father is one of those cranky autodidacts who figure everything out for themselves, and then insist they are right (even writing blogs about it!) and speaking on God's behalf. He runs a junk yard, salvaging copper, iron, and other materials from junked cars in the most unsafe ways, getting various family members injured in the process. Finally, he manages to get himself half-incinerated by taking a blowtorch to unemptied gasoline tank, and, while surviving by the grace of his wife's diligent care, is hobbled for life. More striking, however is his prediction that the Y2K crisis will bring on the Days of Abomination. He is convinced that the end-times are near, society will break down, and they, on their mountain will happily be both safe and vindicated. Lectures on these themes go on endlessly. But as he and Tara watch TV that millennium night, nothing happens, and she sees him visibly diminish, brought down by a cruel reality.
The father provides the baseline fundamentalism and ultimate leadership in the family dynamic. But Shawn brings the muscle. His relationship with Tara has mostly been very close and positive. But it is also clear that he is a psychopath, and Tara's maturation brings out a dark, controlling and vindictive side. He makes a practice of calling her a whore for any transgression of the patriarchal code, then nigger if she has gotten dirty in the junk yard, then abusing her in cruel and physical ways. Afterwards, he says it was all in good fun, and she can just tell him to stop any time, right? We now call this gaslighting, though no one had a name for it back then. For a teen age girl, it was shameful, degrading, and confusing. And it is fully backed up by the family, since the father doesn't see anything wrong with a bit of horseplay and role enforcement, and the mother- well, the mother can not cross the father.
Years on, after some degree of consciousness raising, Tara has the temerity to call Shawn on his behavior. The father goes on an extensive campaign to close the family ranks, and finally comes to Tara to give he the climactic choice of the book- accept his priestly blessing, which is to say accede to the patriarchal hierarchy and squelch her own memories and growing self, or else be ostracized. Westover has told this story in excruciating detail in order to make sense of this moment, to show how powerful social control can be, capable of turning people against themselves and against their very knowledge of reality.
Why? The evolutionary argument is reasonably clear- people, living in social systems, need to have some shared understandings of each other and reality. These understandings are tied up with power and who gets to run these systems- whose interests are served. And it is historically clear that those who are disagreeable enough to buck the established narrative very often end up dead- burned at the stake, forced to drink the hemlock, run out of town, ostracized. The line between justice in some necessary civic sense, and totalitarian measures against deviance, impiety, and disobedience is not a clear one. It is a modern innovation to separate the state from religious conceptions of the social order, now leaving each religious community to police its own congregants with other tools. But over the long arc of human history and pre-history, these were closely intertwined, indeed indivisible. Being trapped in one's family and tribe meant getting along with its reality, whatever that might be.
Tara is almost crushed by the choice, and the dissonance of being loved by people who increasingly seem both untethered from reality, and intensely controlling of their communal version of it. She goes through years of depression and doubt, torn to the core between loyalty to family, and loyalty to what she is shaping as her new self, fostered on intellectual adventures that go unimaginably beyond what her former (and alternate) self could have achieved. Is it worth it? That is the frequent problem of waking up from a religion (or a family) - that one has to lose its comforts and support in order to understand it more fully and overcome its glaring limitations.
- You don't have to be smart to run a cult.
- Thanks, Tea Party.
- Stupidity is generally not the answer.
- How many times does this president need to be impeached?
- Bill Mitchell on the job guarantee, and on bandwagons.
- How's your sky?
- Some more nice piano.
