pyyaml is producing undesired !!python/unicode output

I am using pyyaml to dump an object to a file. There are several unicode strings in the object. I've done this before, but now it's producing output items like this: ``` 'item': !!python/unicode "some string" ``` Instead of the desired: ``` 'item': 'some string' ``` I'm intending to output as utf-8. The current command I use is: ``` yaml.dump(data,file(suite_out,'w'),encoding='utf-8',indent=4,allow_unicode=True) ``` In other locations I do the following and it works: ``` codecs.open(suite_out,"w","utf-8").write( yaml.dump(suite,indent=4,width=10000) ) ``` What am I doing wrong? Python 2.7.3