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Dictee By Theresa Hak Kyung Cha ( University of California Press )
Release Date: 2001-09-28
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Product Description
Dictee is the best-known work of the versatile and important artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982). A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictee 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 element that unites these women is 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.
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 Contemporary Art in Book Form
I read this book for my Asian American lit class and found it excruciating painful to read. It's certainly inventive, but that's the only positive thing I can say about it. It's difficult to read, there are no characters to love. The French side by side is misleading since the translations are not exact. I would not call this a book, but rather a piece of contemporary art: It has a great concept but isn't actually very nice to read.
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 an amazing work ( judy101001 )
Dictee is a seminal work that has strongly influenced those poets lucky enough to have read it in the decades since it first appeared. It has had an underground reputation for decades, and now is beginning to be known to the mainstream. Yes, Dictee is rooted in the specifics of her family's immigrant experience, in the specifics of Korea and of America, in the specifics of gender, but it explodes across time, space and cultures, it transcends form, and ultimately it transforms the reader's consciousness of what can be done with writing and how you can perceive your life. I am tempted to say "if Cha had lived longer she would have been one of our major writers" but in fact she *is* one of the major writers of the second half of the 20th century, on the strength of this one work alone. I am delighted that Dictee is soon to appear in an addition with more of Cha's work.
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 Intriguing, but inaccessible ( cpalo )
This book is certainly written in a surprising format, and some of the passages are interesting. However, in attempting to follow Cha's thought from one part to the next, the thought itself disappears, leaving only a form.
This book is clearly written for a very narrow range of readers: recent female Korean emigres to America who also know French, as well as extremely knowledgeable scholars. Those who do identify in some way with Cha's biography do find a way into the text. The two articles I read as part of a study of this book were written by Korean American women, who did find something meaningful in Dictee.
I, however, was lost and confused most of the time by the often minimalist use of words, their repeating, and the sudden jumps in theme and style.
Buy this book only if you fit into the above mentioned category, or if you have much time and desire to struggle through a confusing work for a questionable reward.
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Reflection of woman ( cane32 )
This book is confusing, frustrating, consuming and utterly breathtaking. It is a shattered mirror w/ pieces of riddles, poetry, cold photos of mothers and unsung heroines & nonsense; a true reflection of a woman. And like a woman, it takes work to truly understand its essence. Discovering what is hidden within Cha's deliberate chaos is like discovering the most sacred thoughts a woman possess. What makes this book unique is not so much the unconventional style but its dominating force to be absolutely nonconforming, such as the wildness that goes on in a woman's mind. It's not meant to be dissected and place into some kind of scientific formula of understanding. It's meant to be subjective, delicate and complex. Digest its intricacy and savor each page with delight. -Scribbling Ibis, 3/17/05
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Great book...
This has to be one of the most unusual books I have read. The layout of the whole book is a peice of art by itself. I bought it using a coupon from UnderTag.com, so it was almost free for me.
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