How long does it take to read Dictee?
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha takes about 3 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 17 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1982. 179 pages, about 49,225 words.
7 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 28 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 17 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 3 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Dictee is the best-known work of the versatile and important Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictee is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The elements that unite these women are suffering and the transcendence of suffering. The book is divided into nine parts structured around the Greek Muses. Cha deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry to explore issues of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory. The result is a work of power, complexity, and enduring beauty.
Subjects: Poetry, Women, Exiles, Suffering, Loss (Psychology), Poetry (poetic works by one author)
