User:SUNGHYUN BAI

Dictee

Writer

Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha was born in Busan, the second biggest city in South Korea, during the Korean War. She was a middle child of five. Both of her parents were teachers. In 1962, her mother and oldest brother left Korea for Hawaii. In 1964, her family relocated to California, where she attended Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco. During her time at this School, she was able to study French. It is suspected that the school life at this time inspired her to write <<Dictee>>. By the time she graduated Cha had earned many scholastic awards. Before enter- ing Berkeley university, she attended university of San Francisco for about one semester. And after she transferred to University of California, Berkeley the following year, where she completed her studies in art and writing. In 1973, Cha received her B.A. in comparative literature and 1975 she received her B.A in art from Berkeley. She worked in the Pacific Film Archive for three years. She married Richard Barnes whom she met in a drawing class during her time at UC Berkeley in 1982.

Her Death

At the age of 31, she got married with photographer. She had just received advance copies of her book <<Dictee>>. She was preparing a piece for a group show at Artists Space in SoHo and working part time in the design department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her husband, Richard Barnes, was photographing the restoration of the Puck Building in SoHo. On the evening of Nov. 5, Cha went to meet him there. Just inside the door, she was confronted by Joey Sanza, a security guard for the building, who raped and strangled her. It took three trials and five years to convict him.

Structure

Even though <<Dictee>> is widely known as a novel, the genre is not clearly definable. Due to its polyphonic aspect, dictee can not be classified into specific category. In this work, as well as her other works, interaction of language is one of the most important themes. She visually manipulate letters and texts. The sizes and placement of letters on the page are graphically transformed and reconstructed, which was unusual and considered as an experimental approach at that time. <<Dictee>> consistes of various languages such as French, English, Korean and even Chinese characteristics. They are mingled with each other without any dominant rule even in a same paragraphe or on the same page. They form a kind of visual image and sound or uncertain impression. As a result, words or phrases itself do not contain any significant meaning. However, its sounds and visual variation newly construct significant meaning. Most of the phrases are compared to a babbling of enfant, which does not has any meaning but expose a desire for speaking. In these texts, the languages are used in repetitive, “broken” phrases and frequent code-switching, similar to the communication of an individual learning the languages. This way of writing causes readers to think about the arbitrary on language and writing, bringing our a question on the social requirements of good speech and correct grammar.

Her minor identity as an immigrant is evidently expressed in <<Dictee>> which experiments with juxtaposition and hypertext of both literal and visual media. Now, her works are widely studied in contemporary literature classes of University in U.S.