Hidden Figures Book Analysis

Hidden Figures book vs. movie Hidden Figures written by Margot Lee Shetterly based her book off the lives of real women that deserved credit for all the hard work they contributed to the launch of Friendship 7 where John Glenn was the first American to ever orbit the earth. The main point of the book is to emphasize the untold stories of three African American women that helped win the space race. Reading the book and watching the film, we learn the struggles that come with being a woman in that time but also must importantly we learn about the struggles of being a colored woman. An example would be when Katherine asks where the bathroom is and she is told that they don’t know where “her” bathroom is. She didn’t let that affect her work at …show more content…
We see that when Katherine is first meets Jim Johnson (her future husband) and he questions Katherine about women working at NASA. Men, at the time did not think that women we capable of doing other things then just being in a kitchen all day. And you see it again when Katherine has a new assignment working for Mr. Harrison, Katherine having to fight her way into letting her male co-workers to give her all the information about the launch. All the women had their own challenges Mary Jackson with trying to become the first African American engineer and Dorthey trying to become the supervisor of the west computers. The movie directed by Theodore Melfi did leave out a lot of information that was in the book but he wanted to tell a story in a way that the audience can understand and make it entertaining enough for them to be able to watch, I think the scriptwriters had to be creative and find a balance between telling the exact historic details and deliver a story that is both interesting and captured the concept of the message. He did not want the movie to be a documentary of the three women that’s why he leaves out the chapters that explain their lives growing up, and just gives us some basic background knowledge. I think that the filmmakers have a huge responsibility to stay true to history because most people will go to see the movie but they are probably not going to go buy the book and read it. So, when it came to tell the true facts about Hidden Figures, Theodore Melfi had to show the world the three reasons why we were about to send John Glenn to orbit the earth. And it was because of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson. The only reason why this monument of history stayed untold was because they are African American women which explains it all. For the film to be historical accurate Margot lee