读书破万卷，下笔如有神。
往期的文章里，小雅给大家推荐过英语学习的方法、利于学习的英美剧、还有最近几期的英文歌曲，今天小雅要给大家安利一本英文书籍，名字叫做《Educated》。
《Educated》作为一本回忆录，作者的语言功底也很强，遣词造句恰当中还透着幽默，获得了《纽约时报》的畅销书第一名。
在看之前，大家不妨思考几个问题：
什么是教育？什么是好的教育？
你的原生家庭是什么样的，它对你有着怎样的影响？
如果你的原生家庭不如意，那你和你自己的原生家庭之间，彼此达成和解了么？
看完这本书，也许你就会对以上的问题有了自己的一些看法。(随手附上一篇podcast的思维导图，感兴趣的童鞋可以关注“books on the go”，听一听主持人对于这本书的分享感受）
作者Tara出生于美国虔诚的摩门教徒家庭，可以说是fundamental Mormon，清规戒律很多。她和其他六个兄弟姐妹成长于爱荷华州的农场，算是美国非发达地区。
父亲拥有一个junkyard，每天都生活在机械的吵杂运作中。他们的父母不信任政府，不给孩子办出生证明，不送孩子上学校，拒绝医院，即使在其中一个孩子重度烧伤的时候也只是在家用草药自己医治。
Tara就像生活在一个与世隔绝的玻璃盒子里面，她只能透过父母提供给她的视角去看这个世界，并以为这就是全部。
直到17岁，Tara第一次坐进了教室。彷佛一个奇迹一般，没受过任何系统教育，仅凭借着自学，她通过了考试，进入了杨百翰大学。教育给了她全新地看待家人，看待世界的视角，她重新审视父亲的精神疾病，母亲的懦弱和哥哥对她的暴力。面对着拒绝改变的家庭，她和他们斗争，她被两个世界撕裂，在创伤中成长。
作者后来的doctorate的研究方向就是结合了自身的问题，研究了摩门教的历史性和它的宗教性，既是根植于自己的家庭背景，也理性地去思考了自己的信仰和家庭。最后，Tara在剑桥大学取得了博士学位，却和家乡亲人越走越远。
一边读着这本书，一边替作者感到愤怒，感受作者字里行间的挣扎，她一步步探索自我，叩问自我，最终和自己和解。这是教育带给人的力量。
“That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”
以下是Hermi的摘选，和大家分享：
这一片段，是作者对自己出生的地方的描述，透着对这个地方的热爱。
“The hill is paved with wild wheat. If the conifers and sagebrush are soloists, the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following all the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind.”
这是作者和她教授的对话，作者不断地成长，不断地思考。个人觉得教授真的是很可爱，每一次和Tara的对话，都充满了哲思。
“You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”
作者和朋友去罗马游玩，以下是对这座城市和文明的思考，也是对自己的成长背景和现实的思考的映射。
“There was a kind of symbiosis in their relationship to these grand places: they gave life to the ancient architecture by making it the backdrop of their discourse, by refusing to worship at its altar as if it were a dead thing. On the third night there was a rainstorm. I stood on Nic’s balcony and watched streaks of lightning race across the sky, claps of thunder chasing them. It was like being on Buck’s Peak, to feel such power in the earth and sky.”
“I don’t know what caused the transformation, why suddenly I could engage with the great thinkers of the past, rather than revere them to the point of muteness. But there was something about that city, with its white marble and black asphalt, crusted with history, ablaze in traffic lights, that showed me I could admire the past without being silenced by it.”
