Navarro Divino L, 10 October 2022
11 Pamulinawen - B STEM English for Academic Purposes Program
The American Dream And Its Hidden Figures
Margot Shetterly published the book Hidden Figures in 2016. It received the 2017
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was on the New York Times Best Sellers List
for Non-Fiction. The film of the same name, which received three Oscar nominations,
served as the basis for the novel. It was directed by Theodore Melfi, had favorable critical
reviews, and grossed $236 million worldwide. This film focused on three black American
women mathematicians who overcome prejudice in the National Aeronautics and Space
Agency. By way of this movie, they attempt to convey the struggles that black women go
through in a period of segregation and prejudice. This film shows the discrimination against
women and the meaning of the book's title Hidden Figures.
In White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the movie opens in 1926 where a young
Katherine Coleman is being requested that she attends a school for talented kids. In 1961,
an older Katherine, now Katherine Goble, is employed by Nasa in Hampton, Virginia,
alongside Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson at the West Area Computing section of
Langley Research Center, which is isolated from the rest of the facility. The Space Task
Group required a new computer that can perform analytical geometry, so Dorothy assigned
Katherine because she is proficient in both analytic geometry and numbers in general and
Mary was assigned to help with the male engineers. When Katherine joined the Space Task
Group, the guys treated her harshly, thought she was a janitor, and separated her coffee
from the white males, undermining her talents. In the engineering department, in response
to Zielinski's assertion that Mary should be an engineer and her response that she is a
negro lady who "is not going to consider the impossible," he inquires as to whether she
would want to pursue a career in engineering if he were a white guy and said that since she
would already be one, she wouldn't need to. Katherine when Al Harisson asks if anyone
wants to take a crack at an equation on a large chalkboard that has gone unsolved stepped
up and solved the problem. Mary requests a judge for permission to enroll only in night
classes at a university that does not accept colored persons in order to pursue an
engineering degree and as a result, she is the first woman of color to ever attend. Dorothy
with her sons go to the library but the white librarian wanted them out, they got escorted
by the police and Dorothy stole a book. Katherine was needed to calculate the flight
calculations needed in the Friendship 7 mission. Mary earns her degree and qualify as an
engineer after the successful launch at NASA, Katherine went on to calculate the
trajectories for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon and for Apollo 13, and Vivian finally
promotes Dorothy to supervisor in the Analysis and Computation Division and addresses
her as Mrs. Vaughan.
