Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens is showcasing a different kind of Asian-American family, one that isn't consumed by cultural and intergenerational clashes

The Hollywood Reporter

"It's not the character's cannabis cravings that make Nora From Queens such an urgent advancement in Asian American pop cultural progress; it's her dad (BD Wong) and her grandmother's (Lori Tan Chinn) acceptance of them," says Inkoo Kang. "Modeled after Awkwafina's own family, the Lins are an Asian American family we've seldom seen before. Many of the most acclaimed Asian American projects of the past few years — Fresh Off the Boat, Master of None, The Big Sick and The Farewell among them — have centered on parent-child relationships defined by cultural differences, child-of-immigrants guilt and aspirations toward the American Dream. These stories, all loosely to fairly autobiographical, have resonated with audiences for the lived realities they evoke. But they hardly encompass all Asian American families, especially those where the parents or even grandparents assimilated long ago. On Nora From Queens, the family hearth isn't a site of intergenerational tension or unbridgeable distance. It's simply the TV where three generations play video games together."