Dictée 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.