tears. The stories of the women in the book (including Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and her mother Hyun Soon Huo) focus on patriotism and exile identity. Cha's purpose of using multimedia and how do visual elements is to attract the readers' attention in different approaches. Focusing on the photograph of Cha's biological mother, Hyung Soon Huo, though it is uncaptioned, it conveys the ways the past that speaks to "escape the capture of discursive language" with this historical character. And in a deep sense, it also "clear a way for what Dictée understands as the necessary reply to not repeat history in oblivion". She also uses a still from the silent French movie called The Passion of Joan of Arc to give the readers a direct concept of what is going on in the text. So readers could think about the reliability of narration and focalization, multimedia and art, the ambiguity and authenticity in photography taking, and the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. Critics have read the book as a social discourse, aiming at informing the readers of the world about the history of the Japanese Colonial Period. The trauma suggested is also the product of nationalism, patriarchal forces, and colonialism during that period. What's more, it also shows the struggles that the Asian American have been through in the aspect of the culture identity. Cha managed to call public's attention to this kind of special group, at the same time, it also let the people who have the same experience or culture background find their own culture identity. Dictée is famous for its unique print format and typographic design, using untranslated French, Korean, Chinese, collage and fragmented text in the book. Not only the title of the book is dictation, but many of the contents of the book are also written in strict accordance with the dictation format. Cha's Dictée carries it out of melancholia into mourning, by working through multiple personal and political traumas as an outstanding work of postmodernity. Reviews and criticism Reviews for Dictee have been rather positive, with Carole Maso quoted in Spin Magazine commenting, "Dictee enlarges the notion of what a book is...because it is ephemeral, fragile, fierce, and indelible, because it is subversive, because it yearns and is luminous." Historical context Dictee mainly embodies two periods, The Japanese Colony (1910-1945) and Liberation, Division and The Korea War