Summary: Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘coloured computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets and astronauts, into space. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women’s rights movement, ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world.
Review: I read this book because I decided to add a Black History Month unit to my English 10 class since we had some extra time. I loved the movie but as an English teacher, I knew that I had to include some kind of literary element if I wanted to watch it in class. So I picked up the book with the intention of finding excerpts for my students to read and analyze. I did that, but I was also stunned by all the history that has been hidden and isn't talked about. Parts of this book were really hard to read because there is a lot of technical, scientific, and mathematical language that I just simply can't comprehend. While that stuff is important, what I found more important was what was going on behind the scenes. We learn about these things in a vacuum, in isolated units in school. We learn about Brown v Board of Education and the integration of schools as one thing and we learn about the space race and the Cold War as entirely different thing. Obviously, these things happen at the same time, the dates tell us this. But it isn't until I read this book, where all of these historic moments are occurring back to back and on top of each other, that I realized really how much they overlap. In a world where we are arguing about what parts of history should be taught, I find this book extremely important.
Date started: January 30, 2022
Date finished: February 25, 2022
Format: paperback
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 5/5
Trigger Warnings: racism
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