Dictee

For the French or Korean dictation exercise, "Dictée", see Dictation.

Dictee is a 1982 novel, by author Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Considered to be the magnum opus of Cha, the book focuses on several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, 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 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