This is my Book Of the Month- February-March 2017, with GR group- The Reading For Pleasure Book Club, Category: Non-Fiction Group Read.

This is one of the most celebrated books of this time and I had very high expectations from this book. I wanted to read this before watching the movie.

Now, the thing is the movie trailer somehow makes it come off as a motivational story with humorous undertones but in fact the book has absolutely NO humor in it!! And I say this because I found the writing very very dry. The content and the subject matter is fabulous because of which I cannot give it anything under 3 stars.

The problem which most of the non-fiction books generally have occurred here too. There is too much information dump, too many people mentioned that have no major role or any great significance in the story.

There are three main characters, Dorothy, Katheryn and Mary. Every-time we got a bit of interest in their stories the plot suddenly veered off mentioning other random people.*Sigh*.

Coming to the good parts- the content. This book was definitely an eye-opener for me. Things I did not realise--

People were heavily oppressed based on their skin color in America till 1960's.
"There were black jobs and there were good black jobs. Sorting in the laundry, making beds in white folk's houses, stemming in the tobacco plant- those were black jobs. Owning a barbershop or a funeral home, working in the post office, or riding the rails as a Pullman porter- those were good black jobs. Teacher, preacher, doctor, lawyer- now those were very good black jobs, bringing stability and the esteem that accompanied formal training."

Those times were definitely confusing as there we soo many apparent reasons a person could be mistreated.
"Bemused, Katherine considered the engineer's sudden departure. The moment that passed between them could have been because she was black and he was white. But then again, it could have been because she was a woman and he was a man. Or maybe the moment was an interaction between a professional and a subprofessional, an engineer and a girl."

And then there is the whole space program and the landing on the moon.
"Because of the overwhelming white public face of the space program, the black engineers, scientists, and mathematicians who were deeply involved with the space race nevertheless lived in its shadows, even within the black community."

It is appalling to read about the segregation which went on till about 1960's. Shocking that such things happened 50 or so yrs ago!!

It could have easily been a 4 or even a 5 star read but it was such a slow read for me. I could not even read it continuously and needed to put it down to digest all that information dump (that I ended up reading 4 other books while reading this one!)

I would recommend this to anyone who has lot's of patience and likes the subject matter mentioned in the above review.

P.S- I am planning to watch the movie soon. Have you seen it and what did you think about it?