Dictee

Front Cover
University of California Press, 2001 - Poetry - 179 pages
5 Reviews
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.
 

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - heathrel - LibraryThing

Composed by a young Korean-American performance artist who was killed far too early, this text brings together many of the pieces of her early visual and aural life. The reader is asked to follow the ... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - whitewavedarling - LibraryThing

Needlessly 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

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
8
Section 2
98
Section 3
101
Section 4
102
Section 5
104
Section 6
109
Section 7
110
Section 8
113
Section 9
123
Section 10
133
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

affirmations Antiphonal begins Bless me father blood body bowl break breath c'était CALLIOPE camera Chaste child Close Up shot cloth Cricoid cartilage dark death dedans diseuse door dust Earth empty enemy enter EPIC POETRY Exhalation eyes face fall father flesh follow forgotten Guan Soon head hear heard Heaven husband Hyoid bone inside J'écoutais Japan Japanese Jesus kerchief Korea Larynx layers Les cygnes light liquid LYRIC POETRY 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 ſae screen seen Seoul shadow side sight silence sins skin sound space speak speech spill stain stand steps stone stops Swallow takes thou tion tongue utter veil Venial sin virgule visible voice void voyeur wait walk weight woman words

References to this book

About the author (2001)

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.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Dictee
TitleDictee
Literature / University of California: Art
AuthorTheresa Hak Kyung Cha
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherUniversity of California Press, 2001
ISBN0520231120, 9780520231122
Length179 pages
Subjects › 

Poetry / General
  
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