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Shetterly presents Hidden Figures and looks beyond the confinements of race and gender

By Adrian Summers ’19

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On Friday, Jan. 21, Assistant Professor of History Celeste Day Moore welcomed dozens of students onto a bus to see Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures, speak at the Stanley Theater in Utica at 7 p.m. The Project Fibonacci Foundation organized the event as part of its Women & STEAM (Sience, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Speakers Series. The Project Fibonacci Foundation’s mission is to empower rising scholars in science and the arts with role models in their fields.  Members of the foundation hoped that Shetterly would pack the beautiful rows of the Stanley Theater.  The audience wasted no time filling every seat of the very large and historic building.
The author of Hidden Figures, a film that critics ranked the number one movie in the United States, captivated her audience by expanding on her book’s main motif: “looking beyond.”According to Shetterly, this refers to situations in which people must channel their imagination and inner drive to see beyond the obstacles placed in front of them, so they can find a solution to their struggles and conflicts.
Shetterly uses her own experience as a person of modest living to explain how, as a writer, her educational history in mathematics and science prepared her to understand the world of science and merge it with her will to write.
Shetterly exemplified a core Hamilton value, when she explained the benefits of writers and scientists working together. Scientists, as Shetterly puts its, think of the ideas, and writers help those ideas come to life by making them accessible to others.
The connection between science and writing benefits readers and filmgoers by transforming information into authentic and consumable stories. Writers like Shetterly, who have not only built this bridge but have also crossed it, represent the inclusive and considerate direction our world is moving towards.
Shetterly described two kinds of looking into the future: solving a problem and searching for hope. The women mathematicians and engineers of NASA who helped achieve space flight trajectories that Shetterly describes in her book had to navigate and use foresight to look past the challenge of achieving flight and putting an American on the moon.
Shetterly explained that the women also had to endure both the racism and sexism that characterized the 1960s in America, while holding onto the only thing they could: hope for a better tomorrow.
The author shared a quote that Katherine G. Johnson, one of the mathematicians Shetterly writes about, used to humble and empower herself during days when she was in her coworkers’ “blind spots,” as Shetterly described.
The quote reads,“I am better than no one, and no one is better than me.”  Johnson kept this quote in mind when her white counterparts discriminated against her because of her intersectional identity as an educated, cisgendered black woman.
Shetterly looked beyond the negativity of her subjects’ experiences with NASA and identified a silver lining: these women were not considered “exceptions.”
Typically, when someone from a marginalized group of people achieves something thought to be impossible, that person becomes the “exception” to the rule.
Shetterly describes these women as “extraordinarily ordinary people.” While they were certainly trailblazers for both people who are black as well as women, many other women of various ethnicities joined them at NASA.
Black women have access to this variety of role models because Shetterly used her platform as a writer to tell their stories. Because of its accessibility, her book has given black women, and other people with similar experiences, the opportunity to empathize with these historical figures and reflect on their own positions in society.
Shetterly’s book has provided mass audiences and readers with a way to empower themselves through hope, hard work, and humility. With the large quantity of women represented in NASA and their relatable experiences, Shetterly left the audience with two questions: Why did we not make any of these women role models for future generations? Why are we just now telling their stories?
Shetterly’s book immortalizes black women–– a people that history constantly attempts to forget.
Her book ensures that those black women’s narratives are heard and give black young women role models that look and sound like them and remind them of their intelligence, drive and ability to overcome racism and traditional gender roles.
As Black History Month approaches, and Women’s History Month not too far behind, I cannot help but wonder if the answers to Shetterly’s questions involve the erasure of black women from history.
Shetterly explained “We see Black and Women’s History exclusively, when Black History is Women’s History.”
I urge the Hamilton community to heed Shetterly’s call and look beyond the convenient categories of race and gender, and appreciate everything black women have offered, and continue to offer, the world.

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