Book #38: Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

I listened to this book purely because of the movie. I haven't seen it yet (but I hope to as soon as it comes to Redbox), but the premise sounded super interesting: black women working at NASA who were responsible for helping put the men on the moon. It sounds almost impossible that there was this group of black women in the 50s and 60s who overcame all the prejudices and impossibilities of that time and were able to not only earn the education necessary but to also survive and thrive in the competitive environment of NASA as mathematicians and engineers. But there were these women and they sound pretty amazing. This book is specifically about three individual women--although there were plenty more--and about the development of NASA and its changes from segregation to integration throughout the decades of the Civil Rights movement.

I thought each story about each individual woman was fascinating. They all sounded like extremely strong women, who knew what they wanted and were willing to work incredibly hard to get it. They were each very independent, most working as single mothers to raise their children and also trying to have a job with prestige and which they loved, and they were very smart. I was inspired by how they were willing to work and sacrifice to achieve their goals (trying to lift their children up to a better place in life). I also really liked the general overall institutional story of NASA and the United States and integration, etc. The thing that bugged me about the story was that it seemed like the author chose the three women she wrote about at random. Maybe they were the main three she was able to interview and get the most information about. They definitely had excellent qualifications and did really amazing things, but they didn't actually interact that much with each other. I felt like the beginning of the book focused a ton on one woman, but then halfway through it shifted to being more about another, and there wasn't sufficient closure about what happened to the first woman or what she accomplished. It seemed a bit random and I wanted more interconnection between their stories. But overall, it was still a very interesting book and it told a story about a "hidden" part of US history that I had no idea about, so it was definitely worth the read (or listen).