The first image in Dictee is graffiti written by Korean coal miners. The text states: “Mother, I miss you / I am hungry / I want to go home.” The untranslated language of the “mother tongue” symbolizes the untranslated pain. Rather than translating the text for the reader, Cha instead challenges the reader to view the untranslated text and understand that there is a limitation to the reader’s capacity to understand the experience of people from different cultures, eras, and identities. ​​Cha’s technique of defamiliarization causes the reader to feel displaced and uncertain, even in their own native language, allowing the reader to empathize with the experience of refugees and exiles living in foreign cultures and nations.

Cha’s portrayal of her mother’s exile and sense of alienation and loss mirrors her own in that they both experienced the shift from the use of the “mother tongue” to the use of a new language. The feeling of being alienated from one’s own voice, the aspect of oneself that most would take for granted as personal and self-determined, is expressed in the lyric poem that composes the majority of the “Urania Astronomy” chapter. Hesitant and reluctant speech is connected with the reluctance to feel certain about one’s memories, with the poet writing: “True or not true / not possible to say” (67), then later in the poem, “true or not / true / no longer possible to say” (71).