We proudly bring you the Spring edition of RevUU 2023. This spring, our contributors had a lot of lee-way to share their work, be it creative or critical. It was only when we had gathered all of the pieces that we realised that many of them had featured contemplations of the many journeys that you undertake in life. This edition features stories of travel, flight, migration, and life’s journey(s). Many of our contributors themselves have come from near and far to Utrecht, undertaking their own journeys to be here and to grace us with their incredible writing. To represent this wealth of different stories, many of this edition’s contributions will also be in other languages besides English and Dutch.   

It was only last year that the Party for Freedom (PVV) achieved a majority in the Dutch House of Representatives, pushing right-wing, nationalist ideas further into the mainstream. Amongst many students at the University of Utrecht dejection took hold; it felt unreal that so many of the people around us paid into the idea that the Netherlands as a nation should be given back to the Dutch only. The PVV, led by Geert Wilders, presented this country’s culture as one that should be protected from the supposed encroachment of other cultures. The blatant xenophobia and islamophobia espoused by this political party shocked us. We would like our outrage to always be transformed into something that can be shared, so that we don’t have to carry it alone, which empowers us to move together. This multilingual edition of RevUU showcases the beauty of cultural encounters and exchanges, the works that come into being through each person’s inherent diversity.  

Not only is there a variety of languages in this edition, but the perspectives on its – somewhat accidental – theme are quite diverse. Without giving too much away, we present to you creative works on family and what it means to leave it behind, poetic examinations of what it means to write and, of course, reviews of novels and other media of past and present as well. We would also like to highlight the winner of this year’s One Year One Campus writing contest, Luka Hattuma, whose letter to Surinamese Dutch writer Anton de Kom we are featuring in this edition.  

We – as editors-in-chief – would like to thank every member of our team for their hard work and valuable contributions. In addition, we owe much thanks to the authors who decided to share their work with us. We would also like to thank Mia You for her guidance and support in shaping this edition.  

We hope that you will let these ideas ruminate in your head while going through this edition’s essays and creative works and that you will find these contributions just as thought provoking as they are enjoyable to read.