Dictee is a 1982 book by Korean American author Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Considered to be Cha's magnum opus, the book, a genre-bending poetry collection, focuses on several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyun Soon Huo, and Cha herself. All these women are linked by their struggles and the way that nations have affected and twisted their lives. Publication history The book was first published in 1982, the year Cha was murdered. The book was out of print for a while, but due in part to the publication of an edited collection on her novel, Writing Self, Writing Nation (1994), Cha's work began to receive critical attention. In 1997, with the resurgence of Asian American studies and Third-wave feminism, the book was brought back into print by Norma Alarcón and Third Woman Press. Genre Critics contend that Dictee, though considered a novel, is difficult to define by genre. It has an unorthodox structure, and consists of descriptions of the struggle to speak, uncaptioned photographs, tellings of the lives of saints and patriots, and mysterious letters that seem not to relate to the other material. Cha "borrows from avant garde and film editing techniques such as jagged cuts, jump shots, and visual exposition", based on her experience in the video and performing arts. The work "deviates from genres, themes, and styles" and fails to fit a single descriptor or label with clarity. It has been described as auto-ethnography, due to its highly subjective view of heritage and the past. "It is part autobiography, part biography, part personal diary, part ethnography, part auto-ethnography, part translation. And all these genres are presented with an intertextual mix of photographs, quotations, translations, and language so as to create a history. Cha's move in Dictee is to collage multiple voices American, European, and Asian---so as to build a history". Cha uses a lot of photographs to engage the reader and create a certain atmosphere. Dictee is composed of various genres, such as autobiography, fiction, history, and poetry and this diversity not only reflects on genre, but also on culture and language. Cha criticizes the prejudice towards and oppression of women, which greatly affects the genre. She “not only challenge[s] the traditional autobiographic ethnic mode, it also disturbs the reader’s expectations by breaking down the boundaries between genres and playing with them”. In