Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race is a 2016 non-fiction book written by Margot Lee Shetterly. Shetterly started working on the book in 2010. The book takes place from the 1930s through the 1960s when women were still viewed as inferior to men. The biographical text follows the lives of Human Computers such as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians (known as "human computers") who overcame discrimination, as women and as African Americans, while working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race, as well as Christine Darden, who was the first African-American woman to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service for her work in researching supersonic flight and sonic booms. It was the basis of a film by the same name which was nominated for three Oscars. The book reached number one on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list and got the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction in 2017.
Video Hidden Figures (book)
Topic
Hidden Figures tells the story of African-American women who worked as computers to solve problems for engineers and others at NASA. For the first years of their careers, the workplace was segregated and women were kept in the background as human computers. Author Margot Lee Shetterly's father was actually a research scientist at NASA who worked with many of the book's main characters. The book explains how these three historical women overcame the discrimination and racial segregation to become three American figures in history. The main character, Katherine Johnson, calculated rocket trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo missions. Johnson successfully "took matters into her own hands"; by being adamant with her supervisor about her capabilities, Katherine Johnson was allowed into all male meetings at NASA.
Maps Hidden Figures (book)
Film
The book was made into a film directed by Theodore Melfi. It was released on December 25, 2016 to positive reviews from critics, and received a nomination for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards. Octavia Spencer played Dorothy Vaughan an African American mathematician who worked for NASA in 1949. The movie made 231.3 million USD (United States Dollar). The budget of the film was 25 million USD.
While the film is based on the book, author Margot Lee Shetterly agrees that there are differences between the two, and she finds that to be understandable.
For better or for worse, there is history, there is the book and then there's the movie. Timelines had to be conflated and [there were] composite characters, and for most people [who have seen the movie] have already taken that as the literal fact. ... You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams. There were sections, branches, divisions, and they all went up to a director. There were so many people required to make this happen. ... It would be great for people to understand that there were so many more people. Even though Katherine Johnson, in this role, was a hero, there were so many others that were required to do other kinds of tests and checks to make [Glenn's] mission come to fruition. But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible.
Other adaptations
In 2016 a Young Reader's Edition was released for readers 8 - 12.
A Hidden Figures children's book was released in January 2018. The book is co-written by Margot Lee Shetterly and will be written for children from four to eight years of age.
See also
- West Area Computers
References
External links
- Presentation by Shetterly on Hidden Figures at the Hampton History Museum, September 8, 2016
- Discussion with Shetterly on Hidden Figures at the National Book Festival, September 2, 2017
Source of article : Wikipedia
0 Comments