Python - How do I properly encode/decode my data?

Question

I am using the xlrd library to read an excel file. After acquiring the excel file contents that I need, I add the contents into a dictionary, then add the dictionary into a list.

all_data = []

data = {
            'first_name': worksheet.cell_value(i, 0),
            'last_name': worksheet.cell_value(i, 1),
            'organization': worksheet.cell_value(i, 3),
            'location': worksheet.cell_value(i, 29),
            'university': worksheet.cell_value(i, 19),
            'interests': worksheet2.cell_value(x, 22)
            'dinner': worksheet2.cell_value(x, 23)
            'film' = worksheet2.cell_value(x, 24)
        }

all_data.append(data)

After doing so, I loop through each dictionary in the list and add additional information gathered from another excel sheet.

When dump the list into a text file, I get strings such as \\xe2\\x80\\x9c and \\xe2\\x80\\x9d. I am pretty sure it is an encoding issue, but I do not know how to fix this.

I wrote the file to the txt file with:

with open('file.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.write(str(all_data))

I also printed all_data into cmd and received the same results, just to clarify.