Yes, I know I’m years behind on reading this, but there’s only so many hours in the day — and there are a LOT of pages out there. Hidden Figures was absolute perfection. What an uplifting and exciting true sweeping account of black women in the sciences. Wow.
People told me this book was about Katherine Goble Johnson and the other black female mathematicians who helped win the Space Race. They’re not wrong, but they’re also not really right. It’s so very much more than that.
This nonfiction piece read like fiction. It was just so exciting. Dozens of characters can be a little difficult to keep track of, but you quickly realize who the main names are and the rest can become a beautiful buzz of “everything else that was also happening.”
I, being the Trekkie I am, knew all about Dr. King’s contribution to the final frontier, but the way that Shetterly basically uses it as the final story to ice the cake… [air kiss] sheer perfection.
Side note, I watched the movie right after. Mistake. I knew it, and I did it anyway. I hate to be the person who says the book was better (even though it always is), but in this case, the book was so so so much infinitely better. And it wasn’t even a bad movie. The book was just that good.
