Actress Nhung Dam (39) is the new columnist of this newspaper. Who is this Groningen-Amsterdam?

She knows Groningen like the back of her hand. From her parental home in the Beijum district to the Ebbingebrug where her father created the most eye-catching spring roll stall in the country. From the University Library, where she had a part-time job in addition to her psychology studies, to her student room in the Oosterpoort.

Nhung Dam (39) regularly returns to the city where she lived until she was 23. Then she appears on stage as an actress, or she shares her experiences at a book festival as a writer of novels. Or she is visiting family.

At the kitchen table

As of today, she is back in the North every week as a columnist in the culture section of this newspaper. She follows writer Joost Oomen, whose column moves to the Saturday supplement.

“Honourable, such a podium,” says Dam about her place Dagblad van het Noorden . “I reach people at the kitchen table through the newspaper, in their heads, perhaps in their hearts.”

She has been writing columns for it for a few years Noordhollands Dagblad which arose from a small number of columns she wrote for de Volkskrant wrote to replace Sylvia Witteman who was on holiday. “I’ve already done a 180,” she says. The approach of her columns is always twofold: current affairs colored with her personal experiences.

They are wide. Dam is not only a multi-talent in the arts — she is an actress, theater maker and writer —; she also obtained her master’s degree in psychology, she is from Amsterdam, Groningen and she has Vietnamese parents. “Through them I realize that freedom of expression and freedom of the press cannot be taken for granted and that we must cherish them.”

What does a country without the arts look like?

She criticizes the fact that her sector, the arts, is becoming more difficult year after year. “We have to fight for subsidies, every year there is a clear cut, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make new things. I sometimes wonder if people realize what a country looks like without art or with purely government-regulated art, like in Vietnam.”

Her Asian background is never in the background. In her work it is a source of stories and in everyday life she is the personification of last week’s news that 1 in 3 Asians in the Netherlands is discriminated against.

Hanky ​​Panky Shanghai

“That certainly happened in my youth, and now I still regularly get spicy comments thrown at me, such as ‘go back to your own country.’ How so? I was born in Groningen,” says Dam. She has started to think mildly about her primary school teacher who sat her on a chair on her birthday and had the entire class sing Hanky ​​Panky Shanghai, including slitty eyes. “I now classify it as ignorance, but it hurt, precisely because I wanted so badly to be one of the others.”

She is concerned about the current state of the country, where vast political differences are driving people apart. “I want to build bridges and seek connections, tell the stories that are not often told so that, for example, disadvantaged children and people who are not often heard get a voice. That creates understanding, I hope.”

Her work certainly evokes reactions from the public. Sometimes someone is upset. “That is the old white man who has never learned to deal with contradiction,” says Dam. She often receives positive comments from people she has opened the eyes of, who see the issue from the other side.