This movie definitely deserves the Oscar buzz it is getting. Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I love movies based on true stories, and this was no exception. Did you know that African American women contributed to the NASA space program in the early 1960s? I sure didn’t! This movie explores the lives of three ground-breaking women who did just that. Janelle Monae plays Mary Jackson, who became NASA’s first Black engineer. Ocatavia Spenser plays Dorothy Vaughn who became the first Black female supervisor and one of the first female supervisors at NASA. The meat of the story though is Taraji P. Henson’s Katherine Johnson, the mathematician par excellence who calculated trajectories for the Mercury Program, as well as Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. Kevin Costner also gives a good performance as the director of the Space Task Group. Jim Parsons appears as an engineer who, like all too many, resented and mistrusted the presence of a woman in the previously male only group of engineers and math whizzes; but comes to value her intelligence and hard work in the end. This is a moving story about some amazing women who didn’t let anyone stand in their way. I hope you get a chance to see this spectacular movie!
Hidden Figures
Apple Rating:
Have you read it? I was thinking about reading it before watching it 🙂
I didn’t read the book. What I did was go on line and research the story, which I found fascinating. Now that I have seen the movie, I would be happy to read the book. Obviously, Hollywood changed some the facts around and it would be nice to get the real scoop.
A student of mine was reading like a YA version of it? Which inspires me to read the book. 🙂
Good for your student! I am definitely putting the book on my list of Books To Read!