How long does it take to read Do I Dare Disturb the Universe??
Charlise Lyles
Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? by Charlise Lyles takes about 4 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 27 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1994. 243 pages, about 66,825 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 26 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 27 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 47 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Charlise Lyles was born in 1959, on the cusp of a new era for African-Americans. She came of age as the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy stirred blacks and whites to right the racial wrongs of the past, although their individual voices had been silenced. In this vivid memoir, Lyles describes how the programs and policies that emerged from the civil rights movement affected her and her family. Lyles watched as race riots and a river burned in Cleveland. When the ashes cooled, her family was one of the first to move into Cleveland's King-Kennedy Homes public housing project in 1969. Through the eyes of childhood and adolescence, Lyles portrays their years there against a backdrop of weekly black militant demonstrations, the rise and fall of Cleveland's first black mayor, and mounting violence and despair. At the same time, she traces her ascent from "the slow class" to an elite suburban prep school, showing how programs from Head Start to A Better Chance could open doors for those with the good fortune to find them and the courage to go through. Finally, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? shares Lyles's search for her long absent father, a quest that culminates in confusion and enlightenment, anger and love. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? shows how the triumphs and failures of the civil rights era converged in Lyles's life while drawing a compelling portrait of the girl she was and the woman she became.
Subjects: African American journalists, African Americans, Biography, Social life and customs, African americans, biography, Journalists, biography
