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How long does it take to read Letter to My Daughter?

Maya Angelou

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou takes about 3 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 3 hours 17 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2008. 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 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

For a world of devoted readers, a much-awaited new volume of absorbing stories and inspirational wisdom from one of our best-loved writers.Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a "lifelong endeavor," or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice--Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share."I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you."--from Letter to My DaughterFrom the Hardcover edition.

Subjects: American Authors, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Homes and haunts, Nonfiction, African American authors, Biography & Autobiography

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