Cha Hak Kyung or Theresa Cha? The Linguistic Capital of Asian American Studies and the Transpacific Reception of Dictée

Abstract:This article traces Dictée’s divergent Korean and American receptions to argue that Asian American studies’ critique of US empire has been limited by its reliance on the linguistic capital of the English language in establishing its disciplinary identity. The author historicizes the field’s anglophone bias and offers new close-readings of Dictée, its Korean translation, Korean scholarship, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s older brother John Cha’s memoir Farewell, Theresa, which has only been published in Korean translation, illuminating the possibilities that emerge when multilingual reading is treated not as an area studies tool for making legible a foreign site of inquiry but rather centered as essential to Asian Americanist critique.