Millennial Nostalgia as a Third-Culture Kid
Part One.
My fun fact at dinner parties and awkward work gatherings is that I grew up in seven different countries. I loved my peripatetic childhood but it is often hard to connect with others when your cultural touch points are just, so, very, different from everyone else’s.
This concept is not at all new (though perhaps lightly covered and shared). Noor Brara wrote about it beautifully in the New York Times Magazine when reviewing an HBO limited series about third-culture kids I’ve yet to watch, explaining:
The idea that a sense of belonging is challenged by the straddling of cultures is hardly a revelation; nearly every maker whose back story was shaped by more than one place has arrived at some version of that conclusion. But rarely do we hear the stories of so-called “third-culture kids” and the private, nomadic worlds in which they are raised, marked by a certain shared disorientation and the sense that home is everywhere and nowhere at once.
I was struck with this familiar feeling of disorientation recently, while listening to a Bad on Paper podcast episode where
and her new book One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting in were featured. The conversation was amusing, and as would be expected, referenced the culture that shaped millennials. Like and Bad on Paper co-host , I was born in the late 1980s (1987, to be precise) but I am not white and I didn’t move to the United States until 2002.Nevertheless, I reminisced with them fondly. This is, in part, explained by the absolute cultural hegemony of America in the ‘90s and early aughts—Friends, Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, I could go on. While I could relate to their banter about AOL instant messenger (AIM) usernames (mine was UDtheSpud87, ugh, why) and away messages (mine were always dark and tortured song lyrics, I should excavate that in therapy next week, probably), they lost me at a roller coaster tycoon game, cosmo total makeover, and a distaste for marmalade (marmalade on toast with butter is the stuff dreams are made of).1
How much of this gap in our cultural vernacular (despite our shared age) can be chalked up to personal taste and how much of it is related to being a third-culture kid?
But I don't relate to the AIM days very much. I didn't do lyrics as away messages and didn't strategize about going idle because I didn't have internet access at home. I primarily accessed the internet at the public library after school, but that wasn't the best place for AIM if we were even allowed to use it there, which we probably weren't.
I appreciated
’s thoughtful review—I encourage everyone to check it out (and the original source material: ’s book, which I am still making my way through but very much enjoying).But all of this got me thinking. My childhood was so singular that I have never expected a writer, or piece of art, to entirely encapsulate it, nor have I really expected representation in broader cultural works or trends. And maybe there is some damage to one’s sense of self in never expecting to be portrayed on screen and featured in books in this way—I don’t know. Noor Brara also wrote in that same article of us third-culture kids:
They relocate frequently and enroll their children in international schools, exposing them to miniature realms cultivated by peers from nations far and wide, whose customs, languages and mores coalesce, birthing hybrid or “third” cultures that are globe-spanning, diverse, highly empathic and oftentimes difficult to translate outside these environments.
What I do know is that some of the books, TV shows, and movies I had access to as a young person were excellent (and that some of them don’t hold up). I have also come to realize that while I don’t expect representation in the culture, necessarily, I do desperately wish I could share the experience of what has shaped me with more than just my childhood bestie (who, if I’m being fully transparent, has cringed at most of my consumption choices, then, and now—shared experience does not guarantee shared taste).
I want a space to celebrate and malign ‘90s and early aughts culture just as much as the next millennial. And this feels true even if it was impossibly expensive to get your hands on Teen Vogue in 1999 in Tokyo or, if my favorite WB show remains one no one else mentions (Jack & Jill, featuring a young Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet).
In an attempt at auto-wish fulfillment, I plan to take all of you (all six of you?) on a journey in my hyper-specific wayback machine. In the coming days, I will collect the books, TV shows, and movies that brought me joy in my pre-pubescent and teen years. I hope something on that list will speak to you, you’ll check it out, and you’ll reach out to me to share your experience with it. Or, even better, you share a recommendation that resonates with me (in the comments or by e-mail) and I have the privilege of writing about it here. Let’s do what the HBO series in the article could not, let’s find a place for third-culture millennials, in the culture.
Please don’t come at me about jam… I’m still processing the oath of allegiance I took during my naturalization ceremony, I don’t think I can continue being American if a love of jam is required.
Ooh can't wait to see what you come up with! I'm on my own journey with a similar idea. This year I'm rereading some of my favorite books from childhood to see if they still hold up. I'm eager to see if we have any of the same!
Fellow TCK here. Thanks for outing yourself—I’d understand if you didn’t, goodness knows it’s something I’ve learned to share discerningly.
Looking forward to reading more!