Remove quotations from MVEL @foreach over string array

I am using the @foreach Orb notation in MVEL to iterate over a string array.

someArrayPartOfAJSONObject = ["Item 1", "Item 2"]

<ul>
  @foreach{item: someArrayPartOfAJSONObject}
  <li>@{item}</li>
</ul>

But what I'm seeing in the renders HTML is:

• "Item 1"
• "Item 2"

When I would be expecting those to render without the quotations. The data that's passed in is part of a JSON object from a backend call, so there's not much else to that object. Am I missing some important fundamental of MVEL?

I was able to figure this out. By using the replace method I was able to remove the quotations from the strings.

<ul>
  @foreach{item: someArrayPartOfAJSONObject}
  <li>${replace(item,"\"","")}</li>
</ul>