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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Dictee

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978-0-520-23112-2
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179 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches, 22 b/w images
September 2001, Available worldwide
Categories: Literary Studies; Poetry; Art; Autobiographies & Biographies

Exhibition: This edition of Dictee is published in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's work, which will open at the Berkeley Art Museum in the fall of 2001. See page 25.
"In short, a book with clear political implications—its non-linear, hypnotic character begs to be experienced first as a lyrical commencement, a re-wrting of how language acts in the world and thereby a passageway into a seemingly altered state of consciousness." —Rain Taxi

"Dictee is a burst of experimentation....It reads more like a secret dossier, stuffed with epistles and pictures, religion and dreams."—Ed Park, Spring 2002

"Not surprisingly, the book is eccentric and thought provoking, like Cha the artist."—Korean Quartely

"Return of a Korean American classic."—Inside Asian America

"Reads like a secret dossier, stuffed with epistles and pictures, religion and dreams."—Village Voice Literary Supplement
Dictee is the best-known work of the versatile and important artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982). 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 element that unites these women is 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.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was born in 1951 in Pusan, Korea, and grew up in Korea, Hawaii, and Northern California. She received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postgraduate work in Paris. Her studies in literature, theory, performance art, and filmmaking influenced her varied output as an artist. In 1982, Cha was murdered by a stranger in New York City, just a few days after the original publication of Dictee.