I understand that this is Tara Westover’s real life that she is writing about here, but I couldn’t finish it because I’m exhausted by stories that emphasize how certain kinds of christian extremism are unimaginable and harmful. It’s kind of like the Pyramid of White Supremacy; when only racial violence is recognized as racism 99% of racism is being left out, including what allows racist violence to exist in the first place. White christianity* is inherently racist, sexist, and extremist. It has been and continues to be a tool of colonialism and female subjugation (and every other kind of oppression). Educated, along with tons of other fiction and non-fiction, implicitly contributes to the narrative that not all white christianity is toxic (it is) and that the “fundamentalists” somehow have radically different beliefs from other white christians (they don’t). I’m actually not scared of the 5% of Americans who are like Westover’s family; I’m scared of the other 60% of the United States that identify as christian. I’m scared of normalized christianity that adapts to new sociopolitical climates in order to keep white men in power. We need to overthrow capitalism, and that’s going to mean rejecting christianity in all its forms. I think we’re several decades away from explicitly grappling with the “not all christians” rhetoric that for now remains more or less normalized in the US, assuming we get to it at all. I’m not going to mobilize all of my empathy to get through something like Educated when I think that, whether Westover and her readership intend this or not, it just props up racism, sexism, and colonialism. read Shame by Annie Ernaux instead.

*I think this about christianity practiced by BIPOC people and most religion period, but I think that white christianity is a specific mechanism and the one that Westover’s book leaves pretty much untroubled