How Hamilton Fits Miranda

Not Lin-Manuel Miranda himself specifically, although Alexander Hamilton’s life obviously speak to Miranda in a big way.  No, this is like my “How Hannibal Fits Fuller” post from awhile back.  Here, I’m looking at Miranda’s past works, In the Heights and Bring It On, and looking for elements and themes that are found in Hamilton as well.

Obviously, Hamilton’s immigrant story has huge parallels with In the Heights, particularly with Kevin and Abuela Claudia.  All three characters overcame a lot to become Americans, though Hamilton certainly seemed the most eager to “get out” of his impoverished circumstances in St. Croix; Abuela was much more conflicted about leaving.  Also, all three had many people making assumptions about what they were capable of.  “Immigrant” is the go-to dismissive adjective for other Founding Fathers when they clash with Hamilton, their way of othering him and trying to make him “less-than.”  Hamilton, though, wears the label with pride, and he and Lafayette both enjoy showing off just what immigrants can accomplish in their new country.

The “young, scrappy, and hungry” patriotism of Hamilton and the other revolutionaries is, on a much larger, grander scale, similar to the ragtag Jackson High squad going up against the well-established “Truman girls” in Bring It On.  Both groups of upstarts are taking on richer, surer, whiter opponents (come on – you know King George III would fit right in Eva,) and they know they’re outmatched in every statistical way, but they keep fighting because they don’t know how to give up.  In a way, the neighbors on In the Heights are in a comparable position; whatever antagonists they have are offstage and indistinct, faceless figures of business, politics, and urban development trying to gentrify them out of their homes.  The fight isn’t is direct or overt, but for them, fighting simply means to stay, to keep from pulling up stakes.

Family is vital to all three shows.  In the Heights has the most heavily-emphasized biological-family bent, with the story between Nina and her parents driving one of the major plotlines.  In Hamilton, we see this best in the ferocity of Angelica’s devotion to Eliza:  “I love my sister more than anything in this life, / I will choose her happiness over mine every time.”  Such a simple line, but it packs such a punch in the context of the show and characters.  But as RENT would say, “Friendship is thicker than blood,” and each show definitely celebrates the families you choose yourself.  The Jackson squad is absolutely a family, as are the Heights neighbors (Usnavi and Abuela?  Forget about it,) and Hamilton gives us brothers-in-arms Hamilton, Lafayette, Laurens, and Mulligan, not to mention Washington as Hamilton’s/the country’s surrogate father.

A final important piece is the idea of legacy.  Hamilton is obsessed with “build[ing] something that’s gonna outlive [him].”  In a smaller way, the Jackson cheerleaders want to make their neighborhood proud, working together to create something bigger than themselves.  And most interestingly to me, Burr and In the Heights’s Usnavi both struggle to preserve legacies they’ve inherited.  Both are orphans (along with Hamilton himself,) and at times in both shows, the two young men feel rudderless, like they’ve been tasked with carrying on something important but don’t know how.  Burr says, of his parents, “When they died, they left no instructions, / Just a legacy to protect.”  In turn, Usnavi’s “left [him] with these memories like dying embers from a dream [he] can’t remember.”  It’s such a specific thread in both characters that resonates so strongly, and I’m really intrigued by it.