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Title: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
Details: Copyright 2016, HarperCollins
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
THE PHENOMENAL TRUE STORY OF THE BLACK FEMALE MATHEMATICIANS AT NASA WHOSE CALCULATIONS HELPED FUEL SOME OF AMERICA'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS IN SPACE
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.
Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.
Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future."
Why I Wanted to Read It: The mass "rediscovering" of Katherine Johnson in particular a few years ago delighted me and I was pleased to see that she was turning up all over pop culture, including an episode of Timeless, this book of course, and its enormously popular movie adaptation. Although I was familiar with Johnson and the story, I wanted to read the book and find out more.
How I Liked It: There are books that you should read, for a number of reasons, be it cultural literacy, for literary value, and/or for historical importance. But are they entertaining? Are they actually fun to read or the literary equivalent of being forced to finish your dinner?
Hidden Figures seems like long shot success for a number of reasons. It has a first time author challenging American history and a story that spans decades and several families with several different storylines. The book is so vast, in the author's epilogue she includes many other characters and stories that would've given an even wider scope.
And the book is necessary. We won't go into the year the book was released, but suffice it to say a considerable portion of America were left feeling displaced and betrayed. This book tells a crucially important story no matter who's elected President, but it became all the more vital the year it was released.
The book goes from World War II through the 1990s, with the central action of course being the Space Race. Katherine Johnson is one heroine of many, and her family's story one of many. The author does her level best to keep a steady narrative thread in such a sprawling, far-reaching story. The narrative at times could be a bit more cohesive (and it's a bit halting at times), but it feels unfair to criticize that when the work here feels so raw, so new, and so important.
It's worth noting also that this isn't a hagiography of anything or anyone. In addition covering what NASA represented to post-War America, the author also covers the arguments from the civil rights movement in the '60s and '70s that space travel was a waste of resources better spent at home (Gil Scott-Heron's classic "Whitey on the Moon" makes an appearance). The shifting tide of public opinion over the decades and how that correlated to NASA is genuinely fascinating.
It cannot be overstated how necessary and important this book is and how necessary and important the act of making those erased from history visible continues to be. The fact a group of Black women were vital to one of American's most cherished cultural success stories and yet they weren't widely known until over half a century after the fact is staggering. Some have opined that this shouldn't just be a book, it should be an ongoing series.
But is it an enjoyable read? The author certainly does her best to make the history feel personal and relatable and it's full of stories that read as they probably were: personal anecdotes from the people who lived them. Hidden Figures is invaluable for so many reasons, among them how enjoyable what should be required reading can be.
Notable: Please don't just watch the movie. Read the book. It's fine if the movie is a jumping off point, but the movie has a white male screenwriter who among other things, ahistorically rammed in a white savior character ("At NASA we all pee the same color!") to make the story palatable to white audiences. The movie is not without value, but READ THE BOOK!
Final Grade: A
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