Born in 1977: The Star Wars Generation
Dreaming Beyond the Stars
Born in 1977? Then you remember the movie line that wrapped around the building, the space shuttle on TV in every classroom, and believing you'd go to space someday.
The story
The envelope was in a shoebox in the attic, under a stack of report cards and a bag of Christmas lights tangled since the Clinton years. It was a cardboard sleeve with a starry sky on the front and the words Early Bird in yellow letters. Gina Whitaker opened it with a butter knife a long time ago. Now she opens it again.
Born in 1977: The Star Wars Generation is a first-person life story of a girl born in October 1977 in Webster, Texas, the Houston bay-area town beside NASA's Johnson Space Center. Her father is an oilfield-equipment salesman from Oklahoma. Her mother, from Houston's East End, works at a NASA contractor. Gina grows up in a place where the biggest rocket ever built is lying on its side in a field and a kid can walk right up and touch it.
The book follows her through a January morning in 1986 when a second-grade classroom goes quiet, garage sales under a pecan tree, and a November night in 1989 when the Berlin Wall comes down. There are New Kids on the Block, Selena posters, a boy on a shrimp boat in Kemah, a summer job selling freeze-dried ice cream at Space Center Houston, and a failed physics exam that changes her direction.
Then come the big city and the big company: an elevator with a live stock ticker, a collapse, and a year back in her childhood bedroom. The sky over Texas breaks again on a Saturday morning in 2003. Storms, a rebuilt house, a Super Bowl in Houston, and a spring spent teaching physics by video carry her back to where it began.
A timeline of 1977, famous people born that year, and a look at what the year means in other cultures are included at the back.
It is a heartfelt gift for anyone who looked up at the sky as a kid and believed.
A few things that happened in 1977
- 1977 β August 20 and September 5 β NASA launches Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 toward the outer planets
- 1977-01-20 β Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as president
- 1977-01-23 β The miniseries Roots airs on ABC; its finale is watched by more than 100 million Americans
- 1977-05-25 β Star Wars opens in theaters
- 1977-06-10 β The Apple II goes on sale
Also born in 1977
- Shakira β The best-selling Latin female artist of her era, from "Whenever, Wherever" (2001) to "Hips Don't Lie" (2006) to the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show Has won multiple Grammys and Latin Grammys
- Orlando Bloom β Legolas in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001β2003) and Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean
- Maggie Gyllenhaal β Oscar-nominated for Crazy Heart (2009); wrote and directed The Lost Daughter (2021)
- Tom Hardy β Inception (2010), Bane in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
- Brittany Murphy β Tai in Clueless (1995) and Eminem's co-star in 8 Mile (2002). She died in 2009