Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures, says “It’s one thing to tell your own story, it’s another thing to take responsibility to tell someone else’s life.” Her book about a group of black women mathematicians who helped catapult the US space program to success became a blockbuster film. In this episode, she tells Michele Norris, former NPR host and director of an Aspen Institute program, that she grew up among the women she wrote about. Later in the show, another award-winning author who writes about race and identity, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, discusses her book Americanah.

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