DicteeDictee 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. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - whitewavedarling - LibraryThingNeedlessly complicated, this work tries diligently to transcend genre and linear trains of thought, but as a result becomes overtly abstract and difficult to follow. More of a collage than a coherent ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - deliriumslibrarian - LibraryThingHow to capture the strangeness of this book? It's haunted me since it was introduced into my consciousness by three unrelated people mentioning it to me in the same day. Inventive, resistant ... Read full review
Contents
Section 1 | 98 |
Section 2 | 101 |
Section 3 | 102 |
Section 4 | 104 |
Section 5 | 109 |
Section 6 | 110 |
Section 7 | 113 |
Section 8 | 123 |
Section 9 | 133 |
Section 10 | 134 |
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Common terms and phrases
affirmations Antiphonal apres begins Bless me father blood body bowl break breath c'etait camera Chaste child Close Up shot cloth dark death dedans Dictee diseuse door dust Earth empty enemy enter Epiglottis Exhalation eyes face fall father flesh follow forgotten Guan Soon head hear heard Heaven husband inside J'ecoutais Japan Japanese Jesus kerchief Korea Larynx layers Les cygnes light liquid LYRIC POETRY Magnificat Manchuria mark Melpomene memory ment mist Mordre mother motion mouth move movement mute nation never night NOVENA once palm paroles pauses pluie POETRY POLYMNIA rain screen seen Seoul shadow side sight silence sins skin sound space speak speech spill stain stand steps stone stops Swallow takes TERPSICHORE thou Thyroid cartilage tion tongue utter veil Venial sin virgule visible vocal folds voice void voyeur wait walk weight woman words
Bibliographic information
| Title | Dictee Literature / University of California: Art |
| Author | Theresa Hak Kyung Cha |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | University of California Press, 1982 |
| ISBN | 0520231120, 9780520231122 |
| Length | 179 pages |
| Subjects | › Poetry / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |