Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

"Dictee" by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

I found the prose novel "Dictee" by Cha by chance. It was a cold, foggy, overcast day and I was browsing in a University of California textbook store and discovered it orphaned on a shelf, where it had been set aside for a film class. Intrigued by its cover, I opened it and was not at first certain what it was about. Then I realized it was a poetic fusion of memory, poetry, drawings, dreams, linguistic mythology and autobiography.

Sound complex? Well it is.... Cha received a B.A. in comparative literature from the University of California and an M.F.A. in art practice. She spent 1976 in Paris doing postgraduate work in film-making and theory. Chas's exploration into language deconstruction was an act of courage influenced as she was by an occupied Korea denied its own tongue.

During the last two years of her short life, Cha worked on "Dictee" which in the tradition of the surrealists and language poets combines, autobiography, linguistics, poetry, memory, displacement, exile, alienation and morphs into dream life. Her remarkable contribution to cross-cultural, multi-media art deserves to be acknowledged as the rich legacy it is and a front runner of contemporary art.

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery

I recently read, The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery. The tale is set in late nineteenth century Japan and plunges deeply into the smoky brew of an entangled relationship between the daughter of a Japanese Tea Master and a French orphan seeking asylum from a life as a convent domestic. Like the roots of a plum tree the two girls grow up twisted around each other in an ambiguous context of love and cultural dissonance. Japan edges towards modernism as the characters seek identity and spiritual meaning, in a tragic denouement guaranteed to keep the pages turning.

For more information on this novel visit:
www.ellisavery.com