4 ms·
The Lady Astronaut series tackles historical sexism brilliantly
- jfengel 6y agoI liked The Lady Astronaut OK, but it took a long while to get going. It starts with some very big events that feel like they're being skipped over to get to the real story. She's trying to cover a lot of history in a short space, which gives it a perfunctory feel. She's not an expert in a lot of things she writes about, and so the dialogue reads awkwardly. The dialogue about the details of small aircraft read much better. I'm not a pilot myself, so maybe it's simply that I don't know it any better, but it felt more authentic -- either she is a pilot herself, or the person who helped her write that dialogue was more closely involved than the ones who helped her write math and physics. Getting all of that criticism out of the way up front, the best parts are the history that really deserves to be known better. She started writing before Hidden Figures came out, but it's worth telling that story several times. Women served as pilots and astronauts, and we should remember both what they did and how they were marginalized by deliberate sexism and racism. The book got better as it went on, I felt, and even having reached the end I'm not motivated to read the sequels. Still, the history her book is based on is so important that I'd encourage people to read this one.