Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover
I have to admit: almost all nonfiction I read, memoir or not, either bores me or seems, frankly, unnecessary. There are few and far in between that I actually find myself enjoying, and Educated was one of them. If it hadn’t said ‘a memoir’ on the front cover, one could easily mistake it for fiction. Westover grew up in Idaho with radical Mormon parents, whose extreme views led to her not having any education at all until she decided to go to university and studied by herself to take the ACT exam. She and her numerous siblings should have all been taken from her parents, such was the level of abuse that they were submitted to. Between broken bones and illnesses and dangerous situations that were “God’s will” according to her father, who was clearly suffering from mental illness along with extreme ‘religious’ views, her account of her childhood is both extremely depressing and enraging, and knowing that she earned a doctorate degree is only slightly pacifying, given that she is still dealing with the tremendous trauma of her upbringing.
The Madwoman of Serrano, Dina Salústio
The Madwoman of Serrano was published in 1998 and was the first book written by a woman author in Cabo Verde, and also the first novel by a woman author translated into English in that country. I saw it on Instagram and immediately bought it without even thinking about the fact that I could have read it in Portuguese. Oh well… The novel takes place in the village of Serrano, located next to a mountain in the countryside where strange things happen. The men are all infertile, people appear and disappear, and no one is ever content nor discontent. This all changes when Jerónimo finds a girl in the forest after a plane crash and takes care of her while she recovers and brings her pregnancy to term. She disappears soon after, leaving Jerónimo heartbroken and with a daughter to raise. This daughter eventually moves to the city and tries to reunite with her birth family in an effort to understand the melancholy that has plagued her since she was born.