This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
In 1982, about three months before the publication of her avant-garde magnum opus, “Dictee,” Theresa Hak Kyung Cha wrote to her older brother, John.
“It is hard to say what I feel, how I feel, except that I feel freed, and I also feel naked,” she wrote.
She had been carrying the manuscript around for three years and had just turned it in to her publisher.
“It feels frightening.”“Dictee” is part memoir, part history, part experimental meditation; a challenging, innovative exploration of Cha’s life, her mother’s difficult immigrant journey across East Asia and to the United States, the fractured immigrant experience, women warriors, and language itself.
Persons:
“, ” Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, John, ”
Locations:
Times, “, East Asia, United States