How long does it take to read When I Was Puerto Rican?
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago takes about 5 hours 1 minute to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 1 minute
A weekend read
First published 1993. 274 pages, about 75,350 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 22 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 1 minute |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 8 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.
Subjects: Biography, Childhood and youth, Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rican women, Niñez y juventud, Puertorriqueños
