In this way the text necessarily conveys the distress of colonial oppression.
The combined effect of these multiple voices is humbling, galvanising and disorienting. The book’s nine chapters are named after the nine Greek muses, and the fragments seem to trace Cha’s female influences, including Cha’s mother Hyung Soon Huo, Korean revolutionary Yoo Kwan-soon and Joan of Arc. The cultural exile of Cha’s parents and Cha’s own subsequent alienation of moving to the United States act as autobiographical anchors in what is a truly remarkable and expansive investigation of language, religion, gender, diaspora and power.
The University of California Press eventually republished Dictee in 2001. Her work only began to receive critical attention after a book of essays edited by Elaine H. However, the experimental structure initially deterred readers and so it went out of print. Its richness offers something new with every reading. In the same year, she was raped and murdered by convicted serial rapist Joey Sanza in New York.ĭictee’s structure as a hybrid work of poetry, prose, image and diagram deliberately rejects narrativity. Her only book, Dictee, was published in 1982. Cha and her family moved to the United States in 1963 and there she continued her education and then began her career in film, writing and art. Upon returning to Korea, their native language and other cultural practices remained banned. Cha’s parents grew up in Manchuria, their parents having fled there during the annexation of Korea by Japan. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was born in 1951 in South Korea, during the Korean War. Expression is a triumph yet also a burden. To speak and to be understood is a challenge we all experience. Inside is the pain of speech the pain to say.
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