The Poet Who Writes About Vietnam in Hebrew

On her first, long-awaited visit to an ancestral homeland, a poet imagines running barefoot in a verdant field. The scene “recalls the romantic archetype of the Jewish chalutz (pioneer) in the pre-statehood period,” writes Adriana X. Jacobs.

But this is not a story about aliyah, or Jewish return to the State of Israel.

It’s true that the Hebrew poet Vaan Nguyen is an Israeli citizen. She was born in Ashkelon in 1982, raised in Jaffa, and served in the military. However, she was not born into a Jewish family.