In today’s episode, Astrid Roemer sits down with Allie Salazar Gonzalez, Development Manager at Freedom Reads, and Dempsey, Resident Creative Writer at Freedom Reads. Following a reading from her novel On a Woman’s Madness, first released in 1982 and translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott, Roemer talks about feminism and the power of her words. On a Woman’s Madness was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. The novel follows Noenka, a Black, queer, woman in Suriname as she seeks freedom from an abusive marriage. Through relationships with Ramses, her male lover, and an older woman named Gabrielle, Noenka explores her deepest desires and liberates herself from societal expectations of women.
In today’s episode, Astrid Roemer sits down with Allie Salazar Gonzalez, Development Manager at Freedom Reads, and Dempsey, Resident Creative Writer at Freedom Reads. Following a reading from her novel On a Woman’s Madness, first released in 1982 and translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott, Roemer talks about feminism and the power of her words. On a Woman’s Madness was shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated judges. The novel follows Noenka, a Black, queer, woman in Suriname as she seeks freedom from an abusive marriage. Through relationships with Ramses, her male lover, and an older woman named Gabrielle, Noenka explores her deepest desires and liberates herself from societal expectations of women.
Astrid Roemer is the author of many novels including, On a Woman’s Madness, Off-White, DealersDochter, and more. At 19 years old, Astrid emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. Astrid won the P.C. Hooft Award in 2016 and the Dutch Literature Prize in 2021. Originally published in Dutch in 1982, On a Woman’s Madness was translated into English by Lucy Scott and shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2023. On a Woman’s Madness was recently longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.
Dwayne (0:00): You’re listening to The Freedom Takes, a podcast from national non-profit Freedom Reads. This season, we’ll hear from the four shortlisted authors for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated readers.
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Allie (0:25): My name is Allie Salazar Gonzalez, Development Manager at Freedom Reads, and I’ll be your host today.
Dempsey (0:31): And I am your other co-host, Dempsey, Resident Creative Writer at Freedom Reads.
Allie (0:37): Our guest today is Astrid Roemer, author of On a Woman’s Madness. Originally published in the 1980s, the novel follows Noenka, a Black, queer, woman in Suriname as she seeks freedom from an abusive marriage. Through relationships with Ramses, her male lover, and an older woman named Gabrielle, Noenka explores her deepest desires and liberates herself from societal expectations of women.
Dempsey (1:06): Astrid is the author of many novels, including On a Woman’s Madness, Off White, and many more. At 19-years old, Astrid emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. Astrid won the PC Hooft Award in 2016 and the Dutch Literature Prize in 2021. Originally published in Dutch in 1982, On a Woman’s Madness was translated into English by Lucy Scott and shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2023. Welcome, Astrid, to The Freedom Takes. Happy to have you.
Astrid (1:45): Oh, I’m so happy to be with you.
Allie (1:46): Yeah, it’s great. We’re going to have a great conversation.
So, On a Woman’s Madness; Astrid’s book is one of four shortlisted books for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize. And for those of you who don’t know this, the Inside Literary Prize is the first major US literary prize awarded exclusively by incarcerated readers across the nation. We launched the prize last year in collaboration with the National Book Foundation and the Center for Justice Innovation, and with support from literary podcaster Lori Feathers. So this year, we have 300 judges inside of prisons across six states and territories, and they will choose the winner of the prize in the coming months. And so, this spring, the team will be traveling to those prisons to conduct voting and discuss the books with judges. To start this episode, we’re going to read a passage from On a Woman’s Madness, which Dempsey is going to share with us, now.
READING (2:51)
“Lelydorp, August 29th.
Merak, Ursa Major.
It’s the start of the big year for us. Time has stepped out of its straight line and become a contracting orbit. Gabrielle and I follow opposing orbits, longing to meet at the zenith. Meanwhile, nature rejuvenates itself in orange harvests, colorful blossoms, molting birds, bright yellow chicks, and seasons–like the rains in May and sunflowers in August. Even the sun gives in unconditionally to the trade wind that pushes it westward, and meteor showers worry me.
For as long as she slept alongside me, my Gabrielle, naked as the pounding of a heart and pure as the murmur of blood, I felt that I’d overcome my primal fear of the serpent. There’s more than animosity between his offspring and me. Wherever I encounter him, I’ll crush him under my heel, even if it costs me my leg. But the horny goat weed makes me impatient, for it harbors not a single snake.
I miss you, Gabrielle.
My love for you manifests itself in flowers. Amid the wild vegetation, your seeds give rise to enduring blooms, for in a garden of shade trees and swamp gas, I attend to the hermaphrodites, exuberant and devout, indescribably delicate and sensual.
In clusters, panicles, and spikes, the orchids bloom with bizarre lips that try to kiss our earth. “Hole in the phallic sheath” is the name for the white one with pink lips. She smells like mountains and frost. She’s sourced from the Rocky Mountains. Her petals are folded like hands in prayer. I have a blue one with a red lip. Three petals and three sepals, deep blue with a wayward offshoot. Seven in all. She shines like a star in this nebulous vale. I call her Ursa Major.
My clients come from all over, Gabrielle. They say the whole valley smells of flowers. This makes me happy, and I continue snipping away–as butterflies honeybees unseen bugs and the wind transport pollinia to sticky stigmata–until the entire country calls out for orchids: our time gives birth to orchids, Gabrielle!
Your Noenka.
P.S. The hedgerow is dripping with sunlight and bountiful golden rain trees to greet you.
Postscript.
In 1875, the final death sentence was handed out in Suriname. The unfortunate convict was a Chinese man. Selected by a cast of the die, he had, along with two others, murdered the overseer of Resolutie Plantation, who had treated people of his race inhumanely.
During the execution, the rope meant to cut off his airway broke twice. The onlookers were gripped by fear. The death penalty was commuted to twenty years’ hard labor in shackles. The convict served only part of the sentence before being granted parole on grounds of exemplary behavior.
New Amsterdam, 19xx: Gabrielle takes care of the kitchen garden. She is losing her angelic hands to the coarse rope that she turns into remarkable macrame. She has submitted to her sentence.
I’ve submitted another request for her parole. My ninth. For years, I’ve been waiting for a response.
Tomorrow is Queen’s Day. Perhaps they’ll set her free then. I’ll wait by the Gate.
Lelydorp, 19xx: The train is gone. The gold fields are stripped bare. Buses from the city always stop in front of the same faces, inhaling deep breaths of wind. I too smell the orchids which are trembling, longing for the cold.
Weeks go by, and new ones come. Everywhere the same people. The same sun.
A month ago, we buried Edith. Children and laborers now buy chilled oranges from me.
I weep as I peel them.
Noenka e kre, Noenka’s crying, they tease.
Today, they’re right: I’m crying, Astrid.
I need to be with my Gabrielle on her 50th birthday.”
Astrid (7:38): Thank you very much. These fragments are giving you an insight in the patriarchy in our country, and I don’t think it’s changed. I mean, Gabrielle is imprisoned, and for so many years for something that wasn’t intentional, for something that she did to help another female, and every time, when Noenka asked to set her free, the answer is no. Okay? And this man did something intentional. He killed someone intentional[ly] because that someone was treating his male workers cruel[ly], and after some years, like, four or five years, they set him free. And this is no fiction. This is the truth.
Since then, there is not a death penalty in our country anymore. So this is no fiction about this Chinese guy, okay? And I wanted to make clear where society isn’t being smooth, isn’t being smooth when it comes to female needs. A small thing about the symbol of the snake and orchid. Okay, I said something about the orchid. It is important. It is important that it isn’t to feel as something going away from society, like this flower is a very…these flowers are extremely beautiful, okay, but it’s very hard to have them just where we are, okay. They want to be really in the deepest of the Amazon forest and the snake thing… These things, it’s a bit about Christianity, the Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. It is the symbol where these three–four–religions have something with each other, which they never talk about, but in their mystery text, you can read about it. So I want to leave it like that. It is not especially, it is not a female symbol, even though they like to say, when a female person is speaking out, “Look, she’s like a snake.” They seldom say that a man is like a snake. They used to say that a woman is like a snake. It’s a way to put it into discussion, because in my country, it was difficult for me to sell the novel because the publisher puts a snake on the cover, and the Creole people did not want it. They bought the book and they tear this cover away from it. They hated it. But the Hindu people and Muslim people and the Jewish people in my country had no problem with it.
Allie (11:59): That’s fascinating. I’m really glad you mentioned that, because it comes up in the novel, right? We have the dagwes, and they play a really strong presence. Both, I think, as, you know, Noenka’s father and that side of the family have really strong traditions surrounding the dagwes, the snakes, and ultimately that ends up being one of the breakaway points, right? Why Noenka’s father is ostracized from his family when he ultimately kills two of those snakes, and he becomes this outcast, and that kind of exiling, right, of a family member because of a breaking of a cultural boundary. It’s interesting that the cover was something that crossed the cultural boundary for some people, and ultimately led people to go as far as, like, tearing off the cover page of the book. That’s very interesting. And so, I guess I would ask you, Astrid, there are a lot of different fascinating themes within your book, a lot of talking about patriarchy and things that women face in society, in your society, that you know well, in Suriname. And there are also some universal themes there, right? I mean, patriarchy is something that women confront everywhere. But I think you also touch on other, very important issues within your book. Did– Given the time when this was published, right, 1982, what was the reception like? You mentioned having difficulties with selling the novel and the novel seeing success. What was it like to publish this in 1982? Because, I’m just stunned by a lot of the themes that you talk about here, especially as a woman, and all of those themes still being relevant today. So could you share a little bit more about that?
Dempsey (14:25): And if I may add to that, Astrid–can you also tell us, in part, do you think, as Allie mentioned, that the difficulty of publishing this type of a novel, 1982, where you were living, where you are living: do you see this as sort of a protest novel?
Astrid (14:42): Okay, let me try to answer. Writing the novel, I had not the intention to publish it. So, I just, I was young, like 22, 23, and my very, very big hobby, reading and cosmology. So, I was with my lover in The Hague in Holland, and he was a diplomat, and I’ve been at home, and I love to read and I love to write poetry, etcetera. So, I’m going on, this novel started to be. And my lover said to me, “Listen, dear, you’re at home, but try to write, like, three pages every day. Just do that for me.” Because he really wanted me to be a writer, okay? And then this novel came. It happened. I never, ever thought I should publish it. And then I published another novel. Take Me Back, Suriname, very popular in Paramaribo, and this Dutch publisher read that novel, and he contacted me and said, “Don’t you have anything more than this?” And I said, “Well, something, yeah.”
And so I sent him the manuscript about the madness, and he was very, very, very taken by it, and he published it, and it became sort of best-seller. And, but I didn't know, because I was in Holland, I'm a so-called Black young girl in Holland. I didn't care about what was going on in Holland. And in Suriname, where I came from, there is not a tradition of literature and things like that. And they never talked about, talk about the writers or anything. Okay, so the novel last for weeks and weeks on the bestseller list, and I didn't know until I came in a shop and, and I saw this big picture of me hanging there, and I was, “What's going on?” Okay, yeah, you know. And the publisher never told me anything because he thought, “Of course, Astrid must know this.” Because it is in the papers every day and every week. This list with bestsellers. Okay, so that was the thing.
And then people at the university, the town where feministic fights were very heavy in Holland. And I like when people ask me, ”What kind of women do you like very much as being strong?” Really, the Dutch ladies are very, very, very strong in what they think about feminism, okay. And then came my novel, and it was pretty new to them. So, oh my God, look! So much tenderly things between women in a novel where there is just patriarchy, outspoken to. And they loved the novel and the way I used language, because what I did is what–I used Dutch, because Dutch is my mother tongue. And in Suriname, all the other ethnicities I named still have their their own mother tongue. They use it. Still use it, but the official language was Dutch, and Dutch was, in our family was, let's say, our mother tongue. But there is in the language, of course, this, this male…are male points of views and colonial points of views. And I said to myself, “I will clean the language before I use it.” Okay, so this was another kind of Dutch. I didn't use, like–I give you an example. Like, let's say they called us Black people. But I said, “Well, you call me black, but the word, the word black in your language, is a dirty word. It's going to all what is bad: a black day, black money, black this, black that. It's never good. So it's okay if you use black like dirty, etc, but don't call me black, okay? Because if you call me black, you're projecting all this negativity upon me.”
So I was just, I did it with black, but I also did it with what they say about animals or about Turkish people or whatever. So my language was another kind of language, and the feminists, they loved it. And so in that sort circles, the novel was extremely popular. But then again, I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it! So to me, it was a hard time, because in Suriname, they were saying,”What are you writing about?”
Allie (20:45): And I think that's amazing, too, in that, I mean, you wrote this, not expecting this to be published, and yet it made such a big splash. And I'm sure it really spoke to people across different levels. I think another thing that's really, what I find really impressive and very moving is the intersectionality within the novel. I think you know, you have your Noenka, and Gabrielle are facing a lot of issues related to patriarchy, right? But there also–there's a connection there, too, to the church that's very interesting. And religion and what religion requires of people. And people that fall outside of the religious tradition, what that means for social norms for Noenka. And Noenka–her marriage to Louis and her attempts to escape that marriage.
I think, another other aspect that I really found fascinating was in Noenka and Louis’s marriage as well, there's, there's a bit of what, what you were talking about with, with respect to race, in that there's at some point early on in the novel where Noenka denounces, right, the violence that Louis enacts on her. And she basically argues that, you know, “This is a demonstration of the pain of you, Louis, as a Black man living in a white man's world.” And there's, again, a lot of different connections that come in through the different characters. The characters are all facing their own systems of oppression, right, that make their interactions with each other not as clear cut as you would think. Like, yes, Louis is abusive, but he's also dealing with his own, with his own systemic issues, right, as a Black man.
I think a fascinating relationship that I would like to bring up, maybe, for us to discuss, is the two different sides of Noenka’s family, her mother and her father, and the dynamic between her mother and father. That I found to be incredibly interesting. Noenka’s mother is very… I mean, she has a lot of regrets. She's also a victim of Noenka’s father's abuse, right? And she also has this perspective that, like, he comes from a lineage of formerly enslaved people, and really wants to separate herself from that, and wants to separate her children from that. While her father, Noenka’s father, has really strong cultural ties that he wants to keep his children connected to and keep the family connected to, and so there's this ongoing tension.
Dempsey, how did you feel about this in the novel? And Astrid, I definitely welcome you to talk more about that dynamic between mother and father, because that…that was incredible to me.
Dempsey (24:10): Yeah, Allie, I got the same sense that you did with this tension throughout the novel. And I think to me, tension sustains the novel. It moves it along. And that just really… As I was reading the, you know, reading the book, and, you know, couldn't help being emotionally pulled by the undercurrents within the novel, I was thinking about what frame of mind Astrid was in back then when she wrote this, because, a writer once said that, “In order, in order to become a poet, one must die to life.” And I was wondering, Astrid, if you feel that, had you not suffered the way you had in your early life, do you think you would have become an acclaimed novelist?
Astrid (25:04): [Laughs] I never thought I would become a novelist. I wanted to be, wanted, yeah, I like to write poetry. And the thing–the tension–between Noenka’s mother and Noenka’s father and Noenka’s with her own man. I don't want to make a generalization, okay, because maybe so called Black men in the US, they're living in another sort of historical habitat, because after slavery, they had to, they must deal with the same sort of people and the same sort of places where they used to be [en]slaved in, okay? And that's not in my country, in Suriname. So Black people in Suriname, after slavery times, they went away from the plantations. They wanted to be in the city, and so like Noenka’s father's family, they wanted to be in the city because they hated, to do, to deal with the habitats where the whole thing has been done, like, 350 years. But there was nothing for them. They had no money, yet, so they had to look for their own jobs. So the men, the guys, went to the forest for wood and gold and all the things you can do in forest to make a living. And the ladies, the women, stayed in the city, and they and they tried to earn some money, to have some money, like looking after children, washing clothes, etcetera, selling things, etcetera, because to them, having your own money was very important.
But the guys weren't there. If they had a man, he was gone for months and months and sometimes for years. So this, like, a sort of loose and not a strong relationship between men and women, Creole men and women, the so-called Blacks in my country was shaky. Okay? So the women had children with these guys, but he wasn't there. Okay, most of the time he wasn't there. He had to make money in the forest, okay? The other sort of families in the same, in Suriname, after slavery, they came the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Muslims from Asian countries–they have a strong patriarchy, where men and women are very tied together, okay? And that was strange to see, to notice. So when we talk about Noenka–so let's say when the man came back and there was a child born–just sometimes when you see in the military, now, in the US, the guy come back and he sees his child for the first time, because he was in Afghanistan or whatever, okay–so it happened there. And when, when Louis, like, when you look at Louis, when Louis is such a guy, and there was this oil company in the Caribbean. And he went to the Caribbean, not to the forest, but to the Caribbean. And then he came back. And he saw Noenka, and he wanted to marry, he loved Noenka, he really loved her!
The thing is, in the novel land, that was a thing with me and the feminists! Oh, my god, he’s a horrible man. And I've been saying, “No, he loved her a lot.” He wanted to marry her, he really wanted to be happy with her. But then he had this book of money from the Caribbean, from his oil doings, and he was used to have sex with professionals. He was used to sex. And then he came, and he wanted this girl, and this girl was from the white sheets of her family–knowing nothing about sex, knowing not, never talked about, wasn't dreaming about sex or whatever. Why? Because the families weren't families, like marriage families with father and mother. Were mostly women taking care of their children. Okay? So there was no nothing, really, about sex. And then he wanted this. He loved her. He wanted to give her everything. And then when it came to, there was behind this longing for her and this loving her, was this drive for having her, for wanting her, for wanting to have sex with her. And that's where the problem came. Okay. And as we know now, she went away and he, he and that's, listen–this is still going on. She went away, and the society said, society, with, with it, with its rules, said, “No.” Her work said, “No, you've been married to him. It's a Christian school. What to tell the children about love and marriage? You have to stay.”
Allie (31:53): Right. They told her all of these things.
Dempsey: Yeah.
Allie: And they were like, “You have to be the example. You can’t be setting the wrong example for the community.”
Astrid (32:04): Exactly, you see. “And if we are going to keep you, we, by being divorced or away from your husband, we are going to spread that you are not well mentally. So there is an excuse for the fact that you are not acting the way we want you to act.” And of course, she was fighting against it as well. And of course, her family and her mother was against this as well, because Noenka said, “I will not go to him”. So this, not only–and the church, an important part of the society–said, “No, we can't do it. You have to, you have to stay with him, or you have to go away. We don't want to see you. We don't want our children to see you.” When we look at, when we look at the societies we are living in today, my own society, in Suriname and in Holland and, and in the, in your country, nothing really has changed.
Allie (33:28): Very much a relevant novel, I'd say. And I am glad we got the opportunity to read this in English and read a translation of it.
Dempsey (33:37): And what you said about your book to, to me, Allie, the Freedom Reads staff, and the Freedom Reads readership, the patrons, was really relevant to understanding this very important book.
And I just want to tell you that I understand. You know, even though I'm a male heterosexual, I do understand the hypocrisy in the world Astrid, as well as the misogyny. The misogyny runs neck and neck with racism, but this is a good way to address misogyny and also racism in a world filled with those negative elements. So the one question I would like to ask you, Astrid, is that, what does it mean to you for your book, On a Woman's Madness, to be shortlisted for the 2025 Inside Literary Prize?
Astrid (34:30): Of course, I had to read about your, your prize, and I'm very moved by it. I should like to have such a thing in Suriname. And I am, you know, imprisoned people are, in a certain way, close to my heart, because they are telling me something about the truth of my society.
And my novel is about a prisoned lady. Such a prize is important because imprisoned people, they're reading the novels, and they are telling you which and why they like some of the novels, but as long as we have so many people, are people in prisons, our society isn't good. Then that's why we know that there is something very wrong with our society. So, I like the prize, very much. It’s an important prize.
Allie (35:38): Yeah, I'm really excited to get to talk to the judges about On a Woman's Madness. I'm particularly excited to go into women's prisons and get their thoughts. I'll ask one last question Astrid, and this is a question that we ask all of our guests. So Frederick Douglass said that, “When we learn to read, we become forever free.” What does that mean to you? And how do you think about the relationship between reading and freedom?
Astrid (36:11): You know, books, novels are my silent companies. And, and songs, because songs are poetry, okay. Sometimes in my country, they don't sell novels a lot. People don't have money to buy novels too, so, but they buy, they love to listen to the radio, and they love to listen to songs, and songs is literature as well. I think that literature is telling us something about us, and it's telling us something about mankind, even telling us something about things we will never see or feel or whatever, but it's making us more…being part of reality. And it's giving us, like they do with the universe in cosmology, every time when they come and tell us something about the new star or whatever, they are helping us to look up at night and think, “Oh, my God, look where we are. We are something. Life is a gift, and we're part of, of it, in a way.” And, plus, let me say this, language, to read or to listen to language is very important for our, to our brain, because it is helping us to think smarter and having more words, more tools to, to express ourselves, our feelings, our feelings of love and hate or sympathy or whatever. So, language is a very, very important tool.
I'm very much alone. I'm very often alone because I write a lot and I don't have a lot of friends. I don't have any friends here in Suriname. All my friends are in Holland and Europe. But I have books, I'm [laughs] I, I don't think that I'm lonely or whatever. I have my friends and my friends are novels and all the kind of written things.
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Dwayne (39:01): This year, Freedom Reads brought the Inside Literary Prize to 15 prisons across the country, and discussed the shortlisted books with over 300 incarcerated readers, who are judging the Prize.
Amy (39:15): So imagine if every one of us had a Gabrielle in our life. That friendship, it started with a friendship. Finding that solace, finding someone who's going to understand us and to pull us right up and say, “No, that's right. You don't want to do it? Move forward. Break the chain. Move forward.” We cannot be sitting in the same stereotype– stereotypical thinking that we've been oppressed with. We've got to stop moving from being oppressed to being the survivor to being the warrior. And I think that's what this book is about, being the warrior.
Dwayne (39:47): That was Amy, a 2025 Inside Literary Prize judge at Central California Women’s Facility.
Thank you for joining us for The Freedom Takes. This season of The Freedom Takes was produced by Sasha Rotko, Tyler Sperrazza, and Madeline Sklar. You can learn more about Freedom Reads by visiting our website: freedomreads.org or following us on social media. You can support our work at freedomreads.org/donate.
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