Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Reads like a secret dossier, stuffed with epistles and pictures, religion, and dreams." The Village Voice
Review
"Too often, of course, the colonizing function of language goes about its invisible work without comment, but in Dictée each scene, each image, each poem or letter purposefully refers us back to it." The Paris Review
Review
"Cha made quiet work with a disquieting impact." The New York Times
About the Author
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) was a poet, filmmaker, and artist. In 1982, Cha was murdered in New York City, just a few days after the original publication of Dictee.