DicteeDictée 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. |
Contents
Section 1 | 95 |
Section 2 | 98 |
Section 3 | 101 |
Section 4 | 102 |
Section 5 | 109 |
Section 6 | 113 |
Section 7 | 123 |
Section 8 | 133 |
Section 9 | 177 |
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Common terms and phrases
affirmations Antiphonal beauty begins Bless me father blood body bowl break breath c'était camera Chaste child Close Up shot cloth Cricoid cartilage dark death dedans diseuse door dust Earth empty enemy enter Epiglottis 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 missing 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 standing steps stone stops Swallow takes tion tongue Trachea utter veil Venial sin virgule visible vocal folds voice void voyeur wait walk weight woman words write