Hi, all! This meme, Book Traveling Thursdays, was created by Catia (@The Girl Who Read Too Much) and Danielle (@Danielle’s Book Blog). I stumbled upon it a few weeks back but just got around to checking out their Goodreads book in order to join in on the fun, and I’m super excited! This week’s challenge is: “Yesterday was International Women’s Day. Choose a book with a strong female MC.”
The book that I’ve chosen to highlight is none other than Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I’m sure most of you recognize as the Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae. Before the movie, however, it was a memoir that features not one, not two, not three but four women forgotten to history despite their large impact on it: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, all African American women who worked for NASA during the space race. All four were mathematician geniuses hired as “human computers” that completed complicated mathematic and engineering problems when the United States was competing with Russia to put a man on the moon, and they helped America get to that goal and go far beyond it. Although it is beautiful to see the instances in which their “inferior” race or gender was forgotten in lieu of their superior intellect, the book also makes sure to make it clear that that wasn’t always the case, and even when these women helped put men into space, they were still looked down upon for both their race and their gender. It is a book that made me feel incredibly proud to be a woman, but also incredibly inspired to make the necessary changes we still need in our society today to protect the differences of race, religion, culture, ethnicity, and so on that still plague our country to this day.
Favorite cover:
Although it really bothers me that the picture of the women overlaps with the title, I like the subtle red, white, and blue colors used to indicate their patriotism, as well as the circles usually related to geometry.
Least favorite cover:
I’m not a fan of when editors come out with different versions of books featuring the movie characters on the front. It upsets me that people are more likely to buy a book because it has someone famous on the cover rather than the actual person the story is about. Even besides this, the movie was not exactly like the book; Christine Darden is not even mentioned in the same book, as the specific tale they decided to chronicle in the movie took place before Christine arrived at NASA. Therefore, this cover completely forgoes Christine as a character, which is not a true testament to the story within.
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