Karen’s Book Review: a review of Hidden Figures and American Dirt

By Karen Bertsch | Photography by Meghan Rickard

What do women read? Or maybe the better question is, who do women read for?

We read for our jobs, or to help us parent better, or be better spouses, or for beauty tips and recipes. Mostly we tuck our reading time into stolen moments.

But what do we read that lifts us up or inspires and bonds us?

Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly, is well worth the commitment and guarantees to inspire. Even if you saw the movie, the book delves deeper into the details of the lives of these brilliant, courageous, unstoppable women. The odds were truly against them. School books were old and outdated; many schools were closed to them: perseverance, perseverance, and more perseverance! They possessed hard-fought-for educations, determination, and valuable skills, so NASA beckoned. These pioneers were human computers--using adding machines, pencils, and slide rules to get our space program launched, all while wearing skirts, and heels, and navigating which bathroom they could use. They helped each other, standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm.

With progress came computers, and these women saw the future and adapted. They learned how to program. They went over, around, and through the barriers they all experienced. They looked out for each other both personally and professionally.

Author Shetterly is, herself, an accomplished woman: an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research into the history of women in computing. She knew many of the women in Hidden Figures. The book is well written and insightful.

American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins is both a New York Times #1 Bestseller and promoted by Oprah’s Book Club for 2020. It is a much more difficult read than Hidden Figures, but no less inspiring--shocking in its brutality, and overwhelming in its ability to restore faith in humanity, it is warm and heart-wrenching. I cannot imagine surviving what the lead character survives. Author Jeanine Cummins gives you a view most of us will never see: a view of the people who cross the border to come into America, to “the promised land,” el norte. This is an important story no matter what your opinion is of migrants. Corruption is rampant on both sides of the border, and gangs of narcos control an unfathomable amount of police, military, and governments. Cities are lost to the gangs, and yet families still function the best they can: people work and avoid certain parts of town. The book opens with a quinceanera (celebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday) and its hopefulness. Unforgettable.

The characters are well-developed and the story is compelling. The writing is truly amazing.

American Dirt and Hidden Figures are life altering books.