Jamal Oriyachi | NPO Radio1

It seems almost like a game: writer Jamal Oriyachi speaks very openly, there are many reactions to his statements, and he has to relate to it and do something with it. “I’ll try to limit it on Twitter to discuss it with everyone, because you spend a day doing it, and then you’re completely filtered out. But I try to respond when people send me emails.”

‘One word does not hurt the mind’

“People often make mistakes,” Jamal explains. “If I speak out against such awareness, it does not mean that I have problems with the struggle against racism, the struggle against gender, or the struggle for the liberation of the LGBT people. On the contrary, I am a big supporter of it. I think they have succeeded by thinking. “

“That language erodes terribly, and if it translates to ‘person of color’ in Dutch, I’m already hanging my head on a roof. That idea is utterly frantic about the language and the words we use.

“I’m a psychologist in the background, so I can say this: a word is not shocking. It’s definitely nonsense. A word is very annoying, and you can hurt it, but it’s not shocking.

Take a step back

His new novel Autumn thread The news is completely marinated. “It’s a way of interpreting what I have already written a lot in my passages in a different way. To see in an imaginary way that I can do something in that way. Instead of expressing my own opinion.

The narrator in this book is sometimes very harsh, but I’m not him, there is still a little distance. There are many similarities. He was a writer, and at some point he moved to a city outside of Amsterdam, which he did not like. As for the story, I thought he would end up in the hands of a right – wing community called Deftik Rects in this book. “

The reality is even more absurd

“In that town I introduce him to an organization called Crossroads, which does a kind of neighborhood work. They organize information evenings and workshops, which are mandatory to follow. Crossroads becomes an ‘awakening’ organization. That the writer must deal with all kinds of discourse.

My initial idea was to involve someone in right-wing circles. What does it need? I thought, I’ll take everything from him like some modern work. The book also begins with a motto from the Bible book of Job. I’m not as scary as God, but I’ve taken a lot from him. His work gets stuck and his relationship is somewhat affected as he is inspired by the ideas of his beloved Crossroads.

I sometimes thought when I was writing, now it’s so ridiculous, but I read something in the newspaper again and it already happened. Vogue is utterly absurd in many ways. “