Dictee is the best known written work of the artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was an Korean American novelist and artist most famous for her 1982 work, Dictee....

. The book focuses on several women, the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon

Yu Gwan-sun

Ryu, Gwan-Sun was a student and organizer in what would come to be known as the March 1st Movement against the Japanese colonial rule of Korea in South Chungcheong. In 1919, Yu, Kwan-Sun was a student at Ewha Womans University's high school in Seoul, where she witnessed the beginnings of the March...

, Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

, Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

 and Persephone

Persephone

In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

, Cha's mother Hyun Soon Huo, and Cha herself, who are linked by their struggles and the way that nations have affected and twisted their lives.

Dictée has a very unorthodox structure, and consists of descriptions of the struggle to speak, uncaptioned photographs, tellings of the lives of saints and patriots, and mysterious letters that seem not to relate to the other material. The work has been described as auto-ethnography, due to its highly subjective view of heritage and the past.

Dictée is organized into nine parts, a structure that arises from the nine Greek

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 muses.

External links

• Navigating Spaces
• Ekphrasis and Multimediality: De-stabilizing History and Subjectivity in Theresa Cha's Dictee
• Memory and Anti-Documentary Desire in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee