Audiobook Review: Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Hidden Figures
Author: Margot Lee Shetterly
Narrator: Robin Miles
Publication: HarperAudio (September 6, 2016)
Length: 10 hours and 47 minutes

Description: The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space. Now a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space.

Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America's aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly these overlooked math whizzes had shots at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia, and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-Black West Computing group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the space race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades as they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellects to change their own lives - and their country's future.

My Thoughts: HIDDEN FIGURES was a compelling listen. I was swept into the early days of NASA and the lives of some of the Black women who labored diligently and mostly in the background to bring the United States into the space age. 

Starting with World War II and the labor shortage that provided openings for bright Black women to work in the aerospace industry in Hampton, Virginia, and ending some forty years later, the accounts of the Black mathematicians who dealt with all the issues of segregation when they weren't at work was a story woven between the developments of flight and spaceflight and the gradual social changes of Black-White interactions. 

I enjoyed the author's thoughts in both the Prologue and Epilogue that illuminates her journey to learn about the times and these extraordinary women who accomplishments were mainly hidden in the background of a burgeoning industry. 

I was reminded over and over again that the adage of having to work twice as hard to get half as far was a reality for women of the time and even more so for Black women. 

I bought this one May 23, 2021. You can buy your copy here.