Dictee
Back of the Book
Dictée 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, Dictée 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.
We Love It Because
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s exploration of perseverance, transcendence and transformation through the many figures in history and mythology she selects is grounded by a premonitory quality in her writing. Luscious in its execution, readers feel held by Cha’s confidence in her final destination.
Memorable Passage
Inside her voids. It does not contain further. Rising from the empty below, pebble lumps of gas. Moisture. Begin to flood her. Dissolving her. Slow, slowed to deliberation. Slow and thick.
The above traces from her head moving downward closing her eyes, in the same motion, slower parting her mouth open together with her jaw and throat which the above falls falling just to the end not stopping there but turning her inside out in the same motion, shifting complete the whole weight to elevate upward.
About the Author
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) was a visionary Korean-American artist, poet, and filmmaker whose transformative and interdisciplinary work has left an indelible mark on the landscape of experimental literature and art. Born in Korea and later immigrating to the United States, Cha's writing and multimedia projects, such as Dictee and Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works, defied conventional categorization. Her exploration of language, identity, and displacement was a profound response to the complexities of her own diasporic experience. Cha's tragic murder at a young age cut short a career that was pushing the boundaries of artistic expression, but her influence continues to resonate, inspiring subsequent generations of artists and writers. Worth knowing for her innovative fusion of language, image, and sound, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha remains a luminous figure whose impact on the intersection of literature and visual arts endures.
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