The story of Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is a true story at the time of the World War II about four African American women (Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden) who were mathematical geniuses and lived in America when most jobs were dominated by white men. But these four, unfairly hidden in history, contributed to the USA behind the scenes during the war and in their space race. The book and their characters are very inspiring. What the four women had accomplished was outstanding but it was even more remarkable because they lived in the south of USA at a time where racial and gender discrimination was rampant. The black population was segregated from the whites – they were not allowed to go to the same toilets, the same restaurants or live in the same neighbourhoods. Also, at that time a woman working was rare, the only thing that the women could apply for was teaching at a school of their race (black/white) or they would stay home and do housework. It beggars belief that opportunity only knocked on their door during the World War II, a time of total disaster for the rest of the country. Men were leaving to fight and for the first time there were job vacancies, for the first time women were needed. The WWII opened up an abundance of pathways for women and blacks and these four exceptional ladies found themselves at the threshold of greatness. The NACA ( National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics – former NASA) started to hire white women to come and work as ‘computers’ – mathematicians at their laboratory. But they couldn’t fulfil their needs with only white women, so soon they started hiring black women for math and some black men as engineers. Other black men started enlisting themselves in the army. The key takeaway from this book is that instead of discriminating on the basis of race or sex we should give prime significance to the inner talent of the individual. In today’s world, although a different era, and despite it being legally and constitutionally abolished, unfortunately discrimination still exists in people’s hearts. People still struggle for jobs or promotions just because of their race or gender. There are many examples of this gross injustice – many women are still sometimes not paid as much as men, the prize money in various sports tournaments for men is higher than for women, in some countries women are not even allowed to work or go out without a male member accompanying her! Though this book predominantly mentions racial and sexual discrimination, there is a lot of intolerance on the basis of what you do for a living, your religion, your nationality. The world’s history is replete with examples of people, organisations and countries rising above discrimination and doing wonders and a recent example of this is the 2018 Football World Cup which France clinched. They gave priority to pure talent rather than being bogged down by trivial issues like race, nationality or religion. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. HarperCollins, 2016. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
A Wrinkle in Time, Reviewed by Daniel Zhu, 10
Imagine living in total peace, but being mind-controlled every minute of your life. The book A Wrinkle in Time describes such life in Camazotz; being controlled by IT, which is a brain that tries to drag you in, absorb your life force, and control you. Honestly, I don’t think that is a fair trade for peace and order. I think that, while there might be advantages to Camazotz, it is still, overall, a bad place to live in. First of all, what are the advantages of Camazotz? You get peace and order. There are no conflicts, for a simple reason: no one has any opinions, because they are all controlled by one brain. Opinion is the root of war. For example, the trade war started because Trump thought that other countries were making too much money importing to America, but China thinks the tariffs are unjust. The keyword here is “think.” Conflicts start because two sides, in this case, America and China, have different opinions, thoughts, on a certain subject, which in this case, is tariffs. However, in Camazotz, everyone is controlled by one thing, thus everyone has the same thoughts and opinions. Nevertheless, there are still many disadvantages. While you may be tempted by the good things Camazotz has to offer, keep in mind that there are many bad things about it too. First of all, you have no freedom. You are possessed every day, sometimes involuntarily, by IT. In other words, you are brain-dead, a zombie. Also, you can’t experience the fun of life, because, technically speaking, your life is not yours; it’s IT’s. This means that you are basically slaves. Even though IT isn’t doing anything bad with the people on Camazotz right now if IT wanted to wage war, I could just use the people of Camazotz for soldiers. Personally, I think that is one of the most inhumane and wrong things that could ever be done. All in all, three words: Camazotz is bad. I mean, look at how willingly people are willing to rebel for freedom. The American Revolution. The Civil War (of America). The Yellow Scarf Rebellion (in China). Humans strain and strive to be free; it’s in their nature. Yet IT is taking this freedom away and turning humans into playthings, puppets.Is it really ideal to live under a “leader” like this? To have your own body, your own legs, your own feet, your own head…but not your own brain? Even the bad things that happen in the world are human will. We get to control our own life here. But on Camazotz, you have no control over anything, even your own life. What kind of world is that? However, as much as I am firm in my saying that Camazotz is not a good place to live, it is still my own opinion. What about you? After hearing this, would you still like to live on Camazotz? Perhaps, just like Madeleine L’Engle envisioned the bizarre world in A Wrinkle in Time when many stunning scientific breakthroughs that relate to the book were not made yet, you can envision the good in Camazotz. After all, there is a good side and a bad side to everything; the world is a delicate balance between right and wrong. As Angelina Jolie said, “[Everything] has two sides, a good side, and a bad side…We must embrace both.”
Saturday Newsletter: November 2, 2019
Which Way Car Wash by Nicholas Taplitz, 13 (Los Angeles, CA)Published in Stone Soup November 2019, illustrating “A Monarch’s Way” by Alexa Rivera Rockwood, 12 (Potomac, MD) A note from William Rubel Before talking about this photograph and the story “A Monarch’s Way Through,” I want to once again thank all of you who contributed to our Refugee Project drive. Thanks to your help, we will soon have a hiring announcement of someone who will join our staff to work on the project. If you haven’t read Alicia Xin’s blog post, “Thoughts on Jewish Refugees in Shanghai,” then please do. Alicia makes an explicit connection between past and present refugees. There is a blog section in every Newsletter. I just want to remind all of you to check out our Stone Soup blogs, and to leave comments. Thank you. The photo! Besides it being a perfect match for the story about the monarch butterfly facing urban barriers on its way to Mexico (which you will find, below), this is an extraordinary work of art. As you look at this photograph, I want you to imagine yourself framing this image. What are you looking for? Why do you press the button to take the photograph when the scene is framed just so? What are you lining up? As you imagine yourself shooting this image, I think you will find you will find that Nicholas Taplitz, the photographer, is guiding you. Let’s start by looking at the flat surfaces that sit parallel to the ground, like tabletops. There is the roof of the UPS truck, the top of the sign that says “Car Wash” and has the red arrow, the top of the big sign, etc. Of course, there is also the ground. Then, there are the vertical surfaces that are perpendicular to the ground: I’d say there are the vertical sides you can see, like part of one side of the UPS truck and the side of the big sign in the middle, the sign with the pigeons on top, and then there are verticals you cannot see but that you can imagine. Nicholas seems to be helping us see this scene as one being composed of rectangular shapes. A scene in which the flat surfaces, or planes, create patterns that we can see and that we cannot see but can imagine. The way the photograph is framed, at first it can be hard to understand the space—then you see, Wow! There is that tiny chair down there on the right, and the UPS truck on the street—and then you realize that this photo is taken from a very high vantage point. You will also begin to notice the colors—the red of the arrow, the faded red of the car wash sign, the bright red of the $49.99. The yellow of the UPS letters, of the first sign by the truck, and of the painted car-stop by the chair. So much to look at! For this weekend’s main project, I want you to take your phone or camera and look for a scene that you can frame to bring out its geometric structure—rectangles in the case of Nicholas’s photograph, but you might find something with lots of curves, or straight or squiggly lines. The point is that I want you to look beyond the subject of the photograph to something that one might say is more universal, that is larger than your subject. What I mean by this is that Nicholas’s photograph is of a car wash, but it is not really about a car wash. The photograph doesn’t tell you anything about what a car wash is or how one works. The place is just a setting for something bigger that Nicholas is working on. I would put that bigger thing down as “how to see.” This week’s featured story, “A Monarch’s Way Through,” is a perfect illustration of how fiction is different from an essay. In fiction, you show but do not tell. In other words, you let your scenes, your characters, you story say what you want to say. You tell a good tale; you don’t give a lecture. Where I live, in Santa Cruz, California, there are several trees where monarchs overwinter. The monarch population in California that winters in Mexico, like the monarch in Alexa’s story, is down over 99 percent in the last 30 years. There were millions of these butterflies, and now there are only tens of thousands. Already in decline, in 1998 250,000 butterflies were counted in three Santa Cruz groves where they stop for the winter. Last year there were 4,200 in those same trees. There isn’t one single reason for the decline in the monarch butterfly population, but one big reason is definitely habitat loss. Alexa does a brilliant job of helping us imagine ourselves as a butterfly trying to migrate through an unfriendly terrain created by humans. Nicholas’s car wash photograph perfectly captures one of the big problems for these amazing migrating butterflies—a great deal of what we build completely excludes the natural world. Besides us, only scrappy creatures like pigeons can thrive in it. I really want you to focus on photography this weekend, but if you have extra time for creative energy, then write a story or poem that will help your readers to feel some of the challenges facing one of your favorite wild things. As always, send Editor Emma Wood what you create so she can consider it for Stone Soup. Until next week, Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has
