Recently, Vaan Nguyen Zoomed in from Yafo for a discussion with diaCRITICS, in conjunction with Vanderbilt University, about the new translation of her volume of poetry, The Truffle Eye. Adriana X. Jacobs, the volume’s translator and associate professor at Oxford University, Allison Schachter, the chair of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, and Ben Tran, a contributing editor for diaCRITICS, joined Vaan on the call to discuss the translation.
Nguyen and Jacobs kicked off the conversation by reading some poems in Hebrew and English, before talking about the challenges of translating Hebrew into English and Vaan’s relationship to the Vietnamese language. The conversation also reveals how much has changed for the poet since The Truffle Eye was initially published in 2008. While much is different now, particularly with the COVID pandemic, Vaan Nguyen continues to transgress a “man’s world,” as she terms it. She channels her frustrations with the racialized overdetermination she has experienced in Israel into poems that describe erotic encounters punctuated by expressions of deep cynicism. Vaan Nguyen not only contributes to the growing literature from and about the Vietnamese diaspora, but also expands its range and repertoire.
Duki Dror’s 2005 film, The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, first introduced Vaan Nguyen, the Israeli Vietnamese poet, writer, and actress, to audiences around the world. More than decade and a half later, English-language audiences are getting another introduction to Vaan Nguyen, with the translation of The Truffle-Eye, her first volume of poetry. In 2018 she published Hituch Hehavalim [Vanity Intersection], another volume of poetry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Ha’aretz, Ma’ariv, Walla, and ynet, as well as literary journals, including Granta, Iton 77, and Ma’ayan.
Vaan Nguyen and her family were among 180 Vietnamese refugees who, in 1979, migrated to Israel. She grew up in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv.
More information about Truffle Eye can be found here. Buy a copy here.
Adriana X. Jacobs is the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Her translations have appeared in various print and online journals, including Gulf Coast, Seedings, World Literature Today, Poetry International, The Ilanot Review, and in the collection Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant (Wayne State University Press, 2016). She is associate professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Oxford.
Vaan Nguyen is the author of the poetry collections The Truffle Eye (Ma’ayan Press, 2013) and Vain Ratio (Barchash, 2018). In addition to poetry, she has worked as an actress, journalist, and social activist. Translations of her poems have appeared in English and French, including in the collection Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (W. W. Norton, 2017). She currently lives in Jaffa and is writing her first novel.
Allison Schachter is an associate professor of Jewish studies, English, and Russian and East European studies and the chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Diasporic Modernisms: Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in the Twentieth Century.
Ben Tran is an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University and is a Contributing Editor to diaCRITICS. He is the author of Post-Mandarin: Masculinity and Aesthetic Modernity in Colonial Vietnam (Fordham University Press, 2017)
