Mei-yun Boswinkel

Mei-yun Boswinkel (born 2003) searches for stories in the physical and digital world, with an eye for form and materiality, alternating between prose and non-fiction. She has previously published in De Revisor, Hard//Hoofd, and Kluger Hans. She participated in the Das Mag Summer Camp and the deBuren writing residency.

Hazenjong

A small village on the edge of the Netherlands organises a special annual ritual to herald the arrival of spring. This time, the lead role goes to the adopted Ming, to the dismay of his older sister, Daan. He considers it an honour; she, a perilous task. Yet, they make a pact to keep his participation a secret from their disapproving parents. As the day of the ritual approaches, the relationships within the adoptive family are strained.

"Hazenjong" is a story about perception and identity, about growing up in an environment that defines who you are.

Excerpt:

It had been so easy when they were children. He had looked up to her, and she had easily been able to bend him to her will. Ming still had the same chubby cheeks, the round face. The scar was almost gone. Only his crooked nose showed that he'd had a cleft palate. She remembered how they'd picked him up by plane, how both his paternal and maternal families had waited in the arrivals hall at Schiphol with balloons, and how she'd been allowed to push the stroller he'd been in, bundled up in a white puffer jacket the orphanage had given him. How at one point he'd anxiously searched for her face. A face he'd only known for two weeks, but among so many strangers, had seemed a little less strange.

It was as if she'd missed a sequence of frames in a time-lapse video. Somehow, it just didn't seem right. That little boy had grown into an inscrutable creature in Calvin Klein boxer shorts.