Yael van der Wouden: English Gave Me Control over My Experiences

from Chosen Tongue · host Eleonora Balsano

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher of creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her debut novel, The Safekeep, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and has been translated into over fourteen languages. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, "On (Not) Reading Anne Frank", has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. We discussed the role of displacement and otherness in Yael's work and how English gave her a sense of control over her experiences. Yael also reflected on the challenges of writing in multiple languages and the differences in tolerance towards foreignness in English and in Dutch.

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This episode was published on October 5, 2024.

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