Assimilating Through The Airwaves

by Matt Sitman

Titi Nguyen, whose family moved from Vietnam to the United States when she was a child, pens a love letter to The Wonder Years, the television show that helped her feel more at home in a strange new land:

The Wonder Years rooted me into my new country’s emotional and ancestral landscape. For better or worse, the show’s historical depictions added to my fuzzy understanding of my own family’s story. Beginning with the pilot, the show became an immediate necessity for me. In the end of that first episode, the Arnolds learn that the Coopers’ nineteen-year-old son, Brian, has died in Vietnam, and Kevin finds a grieving Winnie in Harper’s Woods. There and then they share their first kiss. That the Coopers’ tragedy occurred in my home country at the hands of the Vietnamese surprised me. How, after only thirty minutes on screen, could I possibly feel more empathy for these made-up characters than I had for the real lives of the people of my home country?