Educated by Becky Jo Gesteland
Mom asked me about giving my daughter/her granddaughter a copy of Tara Westover’s Educated for her birthday, and I in turn asked Maggie if she wanted it, and she said, “Why doesn’t grandma just ask me?” which was a good question, so I texted Mom as much, and she texted Maggie who said “Sure,” and then when she opened the present in her aunt and uncle’s living room surrounded by other aunts and uncles and cousins and my father/her grandfather, one of them yelled “educated!” and several of us laughed because we’d read Westover’s account of being homeschooled by fundamentalist parents who really didn’t educate her at all—at least in the ways we think of a public educational experience—or we laughed because we hadn’t read it and thought my mother/her grandmother’s gift seemed like a heavy-handed attempt to convince Maggie to enroll in college (again) and thus spare herself from the degradations of the uneducated in the family—not that our family intentionally denigrates those members who lack a college education, who haven’t completed bachelor’s degrees, who didn’t pursue graduate school, who decided against the terminal degree required for tenure in academia or status in the medical field where the titles of “doctor” are held in esteem—but I perceived the irony of the not-so-subtle message that went out in that gift-giving gesture from the family matriarch, the oh-so-public reminder that Maggie is not as educated as she could (should) be at 23, that the family would like her to appreciate the value of higher education, as Westover does, and that they’d really rather that she (Maggie) be a degree-holding person than not, and no, she cannot hide in the shadows, sit alone in the basement, avoid family gatherings, because she will be outed and shamed and eventually forced into line with the family tradition and get educated—as we all have.
Artist’s Statement
Ever since reading, analyzing, and writing about women’s autobiographies in graduate school, I’ve felt the pull to write about my own life; however, I couldn’t quite muster the courage to do so until I discovered (rediscovered?) the personal essay, which fit what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. Now, I find myself enjoying the shortest of short prose forms--the flash nonfiction essay--and have become captivated by its possibilities.
Becky Jo Gesteland lives in Ogden, Utah, where she is a professor of English at Weber State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 50 Give or Take, Brevity Blog, Gravel, Home: Lifespan (Vol. 7), Palaver, Plateau Journal, Rathalla Review, Role Reboot, So to Speak, Visitant, Weber: The Contemporary West, and various scholarly books and journals. Blog: jomamabecky.org