Newly restored, this version of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s masterpiece honors the author's original intentions and vision for the book. Originally published in 1982, Dictee is a classic of modern Asian American literature.

Dictee is the best-known work of the multidisciplinary Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

This restored edition, produced in partnership with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), reflects Cha’s original vision for the book as an art object in its authentic form, featuring:

• The original cover
• High-quality reproductions of the interior layout

Newly restored, this version of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's masterpiece honors the author's original intentions and vision for the book. Originally published in 1982, Dictee is a classic of modern Asian American literature. Dictee is the best-known work of the multidisciplinary Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. This restored edition, produced in partnership with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), reflects Cha's original vision for the book as an art object in its authentic form, featuring: The original cover High-quality reproductions of the interior layout Dictee tells 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. This dynamic autobiography: Structures the story in nine parts around the Greek Muses Deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry Links the women's stories to explore the trauma of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory it causes The result is an enduringly powerful, beautiful, unparalleled work.

In her radical exploration of cultural and personal identity, the writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha sought "the roots of language before it is born on the tip of the tongue." Her first book, the highly original postmodern text Dictee, is now an internationally studied work of autobiography. This volume, spanning the period between 1976 and 1982, brings together Cha's previously uncollected writings and text-based pieces with images. Exilee and Temps Morts are two related poem sequences that explore themes of language, memory, displacement, and alienation-issues that continue to resonate with artists today. Back in print with a new cover, this stunning selection of Cha's works gives readers a fuller view of a major figure in late twentieth-century art. Copublished by Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive