Dictee

While the reader can’t assume that the speaker is Cha (in some sections, the speaker is distinctly separate from Cha), much of the material was inspired by her life experiences. The book is categorized as an authoethnobiography, meaning that it includes elements of ethnography, or a book describing a particular culture or people, as well as an autobiography, meaning that the book explores the life of its author.

Cha was a Korean American visual artist and writer who was born in 1951 and died in 1982. She was born in Busan, South Korea and emigrated to Hawaii and then California with her family to flee political unrest in South Korea. Cha attended Convent of the Sacred Heart Academy in San Francisco, a private Catholic high school, an experience that is explored in the “Diseuse” chapter when Cha describes the rites of the Catholic mass. Cha studied French and was fluent in English and Korean, which influenced her approach to using all three languages in Dictee. The translation exercises included in the early chapters were influenced by Cha’s language education. Later in “Elitere Lyric Poetry,” Cha’s poems jump between French and English frequently, mimicking the uncertainty and instability of learning a language.