Exploring Stories 25: Woman, Life, Freedom

Woman, Life, Freedom

What if your body is a battlefield by default? Feminist struggle has, at its core, always been a fight for the right to exist – to be seen, heard, and believed. Nowhere was this more powerfully expressed in recent history than in the three words Zan, Zendegi, Azadi – Woman, Life, Freedom. The slogan originated in the Kurdish freedom movement as Jin, Jiyan, Azadi and became known around the world after Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in the custody of Iran’s morality police in September 2022 for allegedly wearing her headscarf “incorrectly”. Her death sparked an unprecedented protest movement, in which thousands of Iranian women defied the regime by removing their hijabs, cutting their hair, singing, writing, and reclaiming their place in public space.

Woman, Life, Freedom began in Kurdistan and Iran, but it resonates far beyond. The oppression of women is universal, and the mechanisms that sustain it are recognisable across borders. At the same time, the movement carries something profoundly hopeful: that even when nearly all your freedoms have been stripped away, it is still possible to stand up for your rights and desires. That women can organise in the face of repression – and that doing so generates an immense and collective force. That makes Woman, Life, Freedom kin to other feminist movements around the world – like those in Latin America, where women have long taken to the streets to protest gender-based violence, femicide, and structural inequality. The combination of vulnerability and fierce political awareness rings out loud and clear in the wealth of feminist literature from that region. Again and again, all over the world, feminist writers pick up the pen to give voice to what might otherwise be silenced.

At the heart of this programme line lies the question: what can literature and art mean for the feminist fight against oppression? How do writers engage with violence, structural injustice, and gendered power? And what role can female solidarity – between friends, sisters, mothers, lovers – play in dismantling systems that seek to diminish women? (Spoiler: there is, thankfully, also comfort to be found.)

This series brings together writers who interrogate the world through a feminist lens – often against the odds. Featuring, among others, Mexican author Jazmina Barrera, whose luminous memoir Linea Nigra explores motherhood through a deeply political lens, and a conversation between Greenlandic writer Naja Marie Aidt and Swedish author Johanne Lykke Holm about violence, womanhood, and the comfort found in female friendship.

More Woman, Life, Freedom? This theme also includes our film program Film & Talk: Persepolis, which screens the film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, with an introduction by poet and filmmaker Nafiss Nia. More than twenty years after its publication, this story resonates more than ever, as movements like Woman, Life, Freedom amplify the voices of those fighting for freedom and human rights.

Naja Marie Aidt & Johanne Lykke Holm on violence, womanhood, and the comfort of friendship

How do you carry on when a violent event has become lodged in your body? How do you find words for what lurks in the darkness? And what role do friendship and solidarity play in bearing that burden?  

Naja Marie Aidt (Greenland, 1963) wrote Oefeningen in donkerte (2025, translated to Dutch by Kor de Vries), a raw and intimate novel about a woman trying to live with the deep scars of trauma. She lives alone, sometimes sleeps under her coffee table, and tries to rebuild her life in small steps. She finds support in conversations with her therapist, but especially in friendships with women in her community—solidarity makes the darkness more bearable. Oefeningen in donkerte is a confrontational novel in which the omnipresent violence against women and the love between women constantly balance each other out. 

Aidt will talk to Johanne Lykke Holm (Sweden, 1987), who translated Aidt's previous novel (Het boek van Carl) into Swedish. In her own work, Lykke Holm writes about similar themes: womanhood, collective rituals, and the constant threat of violence. Her novel Strega (2020, translated to Dutch by Eline Jongsma) is a feminist gothic novel in which nine young women live together in a remote hotel, balancing between obedience and resistance. When one of the girls disappears, Strega delves into the myths told to young women, the violence they must endure, and the question of whether they can expect anything better from the world. The novel has been translated into thirteen languages and nominated for many major awards. 

In this conversation, the two writers meet in their shared fascination with the lives and experiences of women—the dark, but also the most connected sides of it. Expect a robust, candid conversation about violence against women, but also comforting topics such as friendship, solidarity, and the search for one's place in the world.

Jazmina Barrera & Bregje Hofstede on pregnancy, motherhood and art

How do you write about something as ubiquitous and elusive as motherhood? How do you accurately describe an experience that has been so often hijacked by clichés, taboos, and other people's ideals?

Mexican writer Jazmina Barrera ventures into this territory in Linea nigra—part memoir, part manifesto, one hundred percent literary exploration of motherhood. Already during her pregnancy, she becomes aware of the deep fault line that a child can create in a life. Barrera draws parallels between childbirth and earthquakes, between writing and lunar eclipses. And she vividly recounts her mother, an artist, who sent everything she created—three or four paintings a year—directly to a collector. There, her work was stored in a warehouse, safe and invisible, until an earthquake destroyed everything. The question Barrera (also) asks in Linea nigra is: what does it mean to create if no one ever gets to see what you make? Is there anything left of it? And is it possible to become a mother and remain a creator? 

In her critically acclaimed novel Oersoep, author Bregje Hofstede explores similar themes. Is it still possible to write originally about pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood—or does it require an entirely new language? If so, Hofstede has certainly found that language: for pain, for loss of control, for new life that lives within you and that has emerged from your life. Oersoep is intense and intimate, according to the publisher, “more like a trip than a novel,” and has been compared by critics to the poetry of Paul van Ostaijen, among others, because of its “mystical nihilism.” 

During Exploring Stories, Barrera and Hofstede will discuss motherhood and writing and everything surrounding it, including the things that are (still) difficult to capture in words: the clichés, the taboos, the raw and the sublime.

Rodante van der Waal, Sanne Thierens & Jantine Jongebloed on abortion, self-determination, and “obstetric violence”

Note on language: This program will be in Dutch

We need to talk about abortion—and how abortion care in the Netherlands is coming under increasing pressure. Abortion is a right, but it is also still included in the criminal code, which means it could be criminalized (again) at any time. And all over the world, including in the Netherlands, the influence of the anti-abortion movement is growing under the influence of right-wing regimes. In response, new generations of Dolle Mina's and other feminist movements are springing up like mushrooms.

How can we talk about abortion without falling back into old debates? And how can literature help us do that? In this program, we hear from two writers who have both recently made valuable contributions to the “abortion literature.” Jantine Jongebloed (1987) has just published Over abortus, a beautiful collection of personal stories about abortion from six women and one partner. Doubt, certainty, sadness, and relief—all these emotions come through in these stories, which each break through the stigmas and myths surrounding abortion in their own way. And that is necessary, because in the public debate there is a lot of talk about women who terminate pregnancies, but rarely with them. And that concerns some 40,000 women a year in the Netherlands alone. In Over abortus, the people behind these figures are given a face. Jongebloeds book offers moving and surprising answers to the question of what the right to abortion means to those it affects.

Jongebloed talks to Rodante van der Waal (1992), who, in addition to being a philosopher, poet, and writer, is also a midwife. In their recently published essay Baas in eigen buik (Boss of Your Own Belly), Van der Waal examines how fertility care and abortion rights function (and often fall short) in the Netherlands. Van der Waal observes a lack of self-determination in the area of fertility (contraception, abortion, pregnancy, childbirth); she even refers to it as “obstetric violence.” Drawing on personal experiences, poetry, and philosophical thinking, she discusses how we can be in charge of our own bodies in difficult times. Van der Waal previously published a beautiful series of poems entitled Abortuspastellen in De Gids magazine. She will also read a number of these poems live. Finally, journalist and researcher Sanne Thierens will join this conversation. She is currently working on a non-fiction book about how a group of feminists occupied an abortion clinic in Heemstede for ten days in 1976 to prevent it from being closed. The occupation will be published in 2026 by Nijgh & Van Ditmar.

Fixdit podcastopname met Rachida Lamrabet

Note on language: This program will be in Dutch

Who decides which stories are passed on and which disappear from our collective memory? During a live recording of the Fixdit podcast series Lange lijnen (Long Lines), Rachida Lamrabet talks to young literary scholars Jannah Loontjes and Iris Kater Mirsalari about her novel Vertel het iemand (Tell Someone). The book follows a young Amazigh who is sent to the front in France during the First World War. Lamrabet shows how necessary it is to tell history from multiple perspectives. Some stories do not disappear by chance, she argues, and this has consequences for how future generations view themselves and others. She also talks about writers who have influenced her, Fatima Mernissi and Leila Abouzeid. Lange lijnen is a podcast series by the writers' collective Fixdit, which strives for more diversity in the literary world and canon. In this podcast, members of the Fixdit authors' collective talk about their writing and how the work of important female authors inspires them.