Trigger Warnings: mentions of sexual assault and murder
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) was a South Korean-born poet, novelist, producer, artist, and director who created feminist literature and Asian American literature while experimenting with language. Her most well-known work, Dictee, is a poetry book that blends genres and uses language and typography to tell the stories of several women from history and mythology. She was known for using an interdisciplinary approach for her artwork to discuss contemporary issues that make her still relevant today.
Born in Busan, South Korea, Cha spent the first years of her childhood during the Korean War. In 1962, her family emigrated to the US in Hawaii and later San Francisco. Cha attended a catholic high school, where she became fluent in French, English, and Korean. After sixteen years in the US, she traveled back to South Korea during a time of political unrest. She wrote that she felt alienated from her homeland, as many Koreans saw her as a foreigner. Her experiences as an immigrant in the US as well as being seen as a foreigner in her homeland lead to much of her work dealing with themes of alienation, displacement, memory, and language.
Cha’s most renowned work was her last publication, Dictee, a novel of poetry. Dictee is very abstract as Cha experiments with using French, English, and Korean in unusual ways, inspired by her multilingual upbringing. The novel tells interwoven stories of Cha, her mother, historical women throughout the world, and mythological female figures. The novel also includes photos, drawings that relate to the themes of the book. Dictee goes against literary conventions and challenges the reader to question language and genre, but it has taken almost two decades to reach a large audience. Trauma is also a large part of Dictee, as Cha writes about Japan’s colonization of Korea, war, and violence. The poems are fragmented and almost like a stream of consciousness. It is very much a novel that you must read multiple times to understand and appreciate Cha’s writing.
Sadly, a week after Dictee’s publication, Cha was visiting her husband in New York City while he was photographing the renovation of the Puck Building when a security guard sexually assaulted and murdered her. Cha was only 31. After her untimely death, Cha’s work as an artist was barely acknowledged by the media and Dictee went out of print. Cha is currently gaining acknowledgment for her work and has inspired countless artists in the US and around the world.
References:
https://bampfa.org/press/dream-audience-theresa-hak-kyung-cha-1951-1982
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_Hak_Kyung_Cha
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/theresa-hak-kyung-cha-dictee-essay/