Dictee

About this book

Dicte 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 Dicte is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon Joan of Arc Demeter and Persephone Chas 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.