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Hidden Figures

Margot Lee Shetterly

Start date: March 1, 2019

Finish date: March 30, 2019

Discussion: Monthly Bonus Reads

Why we're reading this: March Bonus Read- Women's History Month

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Bla…more
[close] March Bonus Read- Women's History Month

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

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What Members Thought

Jul 22, 2019 ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ rated it it was amazing

A fascinating subject. An inspiring story. Peppered through with facts and fiction and more facts. Of course, some of the things must have been embellished (or not! or yes?), still, the inspiration is there!

All the 'segregation' and 'women can't do this or that job' is such damn bullshit! That seemingly sensible and not senile people managed to actually believe in it will probably never stop trumping me. I just can't wrap my mind around it.

The departmental policy's probably a bit skewed? I've no A fascinating subject. An inspiring story. Peppered through with facts and fiction and more facts. Of course, some of the things must have been embellished (or not! or yes?), still, the inspiration is there!

All the 'segregation' and 'women can't do this or that job' is such damn bullshit! That seemingly sensible and not senile people managed to actually believe in it will probably never stop trumping me. I just can't wrap my mind around it.

The departmental policy's probably a bit skewed? I've no idea how it actually was but it feels to be that way. Foe example:
Q:
Katherine and Al Hamer had already started thinking about what it would take to plot a course to Mars; their colleagues Marge Hannah and John Young would look even farther into the cosmos, dreaming up a “grand tour” of the outer planets. (c) I'm pretty sure this is just unfortunate phrasing which makes it sound like there were 2 (4?) people doing the 'thinking'. There must have been many more, we're just making these one visible, since they are the subject of the book.
Still, this is not making the book any worse, it's a really difficult task to pinpoint how large groups of people work. And anyway, the readers probably wouldn't have appreciated the thing: just how interesting can it get listening to dull day-to-day departmental meetings? I guess, not too interesting to anyone but an efficiency consultant.

I also find that 1 of the girls was, well, not too African American (she was of fair complexion and everything) isn't taking anything from the story. Just imagine being a fair African American: it would definitely be an issue, still, from all sides. This is not a fun position to be in, maths or no maths.

The heroes were independent and well-rounded and idealistic which got balanced by a plethora of researched details and non-fiction style. More's the power to the book, had it not been that way, I probably wouldn't have even believed a word from this book.

Q:
Even if the tale had begun and ended with the first five black women who went to work at Langley’s segregated west side in May 1943—the women later known as the “West Computers”—I still would have committed myself to recording the facts and circumstances of their lives. Just as islands—isolated places with unique, rich biodiversity—have relevance for the ecosystems everywhere, so does studying seemingly isolated or overlooked people and events from the past turn up unexpected connections and insights to modern life. The idea that black women had been recruited to work as mathematicians at the NASA installation in the South during the days of segregation defies our expectations and challenges much of what we think we know about American history. It’s a great story, and that alone makes it worth telling.(c) Totally great.
Q:
There was something in her bearing that transcended her soft voice and diminutive stature. Her eyes dominated her lovely, caramel-hued face—almond-shaped, wide-set, intense eyes that seemed to see everything. Education topped her list of ideals; it was the surest hedge against a world that would require more of her children than white children, and attempt to give them less in return. (c)
Q:
No one knew better than Katherine Johnson that luck favored the prepared. (c) ...more

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May 16, 2017 Jeanne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-women, read-2017, nonfiction, african-african-american

I have not seen Hidden Figures, the movie. The book has little dialogue, long, complex sentences with long lists embedded in them. Margot Lee Shetterly's writing is simultaneously beautiful and obfuscating:

The Supreme Court victories opening graduate education to black students, the executive orders integrating the federal government and the military, the victory, both real and symbolic, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Negro baseball player Jackie Robinson, were all new landings reached, new co

The Supreme Court victories opening graduate education to black students, the executive orders integrating the federal government and the military, the victory, both real and symbolic, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Negro baseball player Jackie Robinson, were all new landings reached, new corners turned, hopes that pushed Negroes to redouble their efforts to sever the link between separate and equal decisively and permanently (p. 140).

I fear Strunk rolled over in his grave reading this. Just because you can write sentences like this doesn't mean that you should.

Most of the most compelling places in Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race are where Shetterly included a newspaper quote or a story. There are such amazing vignettes here, different from but enriching the other African American histories I've read from this era. She intertwines her discussions of the women working at Langley with the civil rights movement. This context sharpens her story and makes their struggles more meaningful.

Shetterly's stories are often hidden in her prose. Her stories are generally only a paragraph or two long, but I can imagine them becoming a scene in the movie: Mary Jackson, for example, working in the largely-White East Computers, asking where the bathroom was – and having the White women, otherwise her equals, laugh at her presumptuousness; Mary Jackson being accused of making a mathematical mistake, standing up to the White engineer, and winning her point (it was his error); James Williams, who entered Langley as an engineer with more status than the women computers, but with a more solitary work life and facing more aggression; or John Glenn, who did not trust the new computers, but trusted Katherine Johnson and her calculations with his life – literally.

Hidden Figures is comprised of interesting stories, but it is frustrating as a history. Although some of the women discussed in this book are still alive, there are very few first-person accounts. There are no photos of the women, planes, or laboratoriesm nor were there copies of original documents. There are no footnotes, making it difficult to determine where Shetterly's data have come from, although her Notes at the end of the book do help. There are many names populating the book; some sort of organizing device would have been helpful (this is where Kindle's X-ray feature was very helpful).

I suspect that this is one place where the movie bests the book. ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Alana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: political, educational, science, books-to-film, biographical, history

Prologue: "As a child...I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that's just what black folks did."

I absolutely love this statement. I love it for gender, race, nationality, etc, the idea of ANYONE working in ANY field and it being completely NORMAL. This is what we strive for!

In Chapter 12, there is a scene where a an African American woman faces an action of a white male colleague which could be interpreted multiple ways. She has to choose wheth Prologue: "As a child...I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that's just what black folks did."

I absolutely love this statement. I love it for gender, race, nationality, etc, the idea of ANYONE working in ANY field and it being completely NORMAL. This is what we strive for!

In Chapter 12, there is a scene where a an African American woman faces an action of a white male colleague which could be interpreted multiple ways. She has to choose whether to be offended, and let it ruin her day, or to choose to believe that it was a simple action that had nothing to do with her. She ultimately chooses the latter (regardless of whatever the true motives of her colleague happened to be) and moves on. The fact that the ultimately end up as friends is irrelevant (although her choosing to look for a positive rather than a negative may have contributed to this), but her choice in how to respond is what determines her own outlook. This has so many application beyond race; in our world today, how many times could escalated conflict be avoided if we choose to look for the best in people, instead of assuming the worst motives, even if the worst motives were in fact the case? We assume the driver that cut us off is a selfish prick: what if he in fact is a young driver who hasn't learned all the ropes yet, or a driver who is desperately trying to reach the hospital where his teenage daughter is in critical condition or [insert other scenario]? What if instead of assuming the person who responded to us with a snarky comment is just rude, we consider that maybe she has had to put up with a lot of sarcasm all day, and is responding in kind, because she (wrongly) assumes you're doing the same? The list goes on. Such a good example of how to positively handling a potentially negative situation that could escalate very quickly. Very responsible, adult and, in today's America at least, very rare.

As a side note, I had no idea Langley had a program in the 50s to help educate immigrants to help them with their citizenship applications and testing.

Chapter 23: Just after making the first moon landing, the entire NASA team was already looking ahead to Mars and beyond! If only we'd been able to continue back then... but maybe we're still heading that direction.

In summary, it's a fascinating story of true underdogs who fought their way into a world that just didn't want them...but it needed them, so they found a place for themselves. Along the way they made incredible advances in science and mathematics, and social connections previously unimagined. It's definitely a worthwhile read, whether you're into the science of space and aeronautics or not. ...more

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Jul 14, 2021 Kate rated it liked it

This is a non-fiction book that tells the story of black female mathematicians who worked at NACA, the organization that eventually became NASA and who were instrumental in the field of aeronautics and space exploration. It was a bit dry at times.

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Feb 18, 2017 Tami Shaver rated it really liked it

I loved all the stories of the characters and the history of segregation and integration.I got bogged down a bit in the science and technical details, but even that challenged my brain in a good way!

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