Lin-Manuel Miranda as a Public Intellectual

When the musical Hamilton first debuted in August 2015, the world was amazed. Never before had a Broadway musical involved such a diverse cast, rap and R&B music styles, and a plotline based on American history and seen the success that Hamilton did. The many boundaries that this play broke stemmed from the mind of one talented and genius individual: Lin Manuel Miranda. Not only did Miranda spend seven years writing the musical, but he composed every song, and even played the lead role of Alexander Hamilton. Since first debuting this show in 2015, the way we view historic and modern-day issues in America has changed completely. Miranda’s innovative work put into crafting Hamilton, as well as his other works, not only changed the world of performing arts but enhanced the way our society is able to understand and connect with American history and social issues in America.

Growing up with politically active parents who had immigrated from Puerto Rico to New York, Miranda was exposed to a variety of different music and cultures as well as the way those cultures all blended together in the United States. His parents Lin and Luiz Miranda both immigrated to the US as teens and settled in Inwood, New York to raise their children. Miranda's parents had both grown up interested in politics and made it a point to show their children how to contribute to the community and fight for social justice. Growing up in a Hispanic New York neighborhood made largely of immigrants and then taking the train to the Upper East Side to attend a public school for gifted children created a large contrast of cultures in Miranda’s life. However, the diversity between his school and home life environments exposed Miranda to many different styles of dance, expression, music, and artistic cultures where he quickly found many styles that inspired him. Latin music was often played around his home and neighborhood, show tunes and musicals were shown to him during school and hip hop/R&B was shown to him by his sister. As he dove deeper into his interest in musical theater in high school and Wesleyan College, Miranda began to creatively experiment with writing his own musicals.

During college, Miranda began creating his first musical In the Heights. Inspired by the stories from students in his Latino student housing and other children of immigrants, he focused on the conflict they faced when transitioning from their familiar surroundings to their more prestigious college lives. The story is set in Washington Heights and tells the story of young adults, specifically the children of immigrant minorities, figuring out their identities in the bustling world of New York. Miranda says he “credits Rent, a '90s rock musical by Jonathan Larson that depicted the lives and loves of a group of young bohemians in New York’s counter-culture East Village, as an inspiration, showing him that musicals could tackle modern themes and materials” for this show. When the show finally came to life on Broadway in 2009, it broadcasted messages of hope to the many immigrant children in America that could relate to the character’s struggles. In the Heights not only depicts the struggles many face in minority immigrant communities but rewrites the common narrative portrayed about them in American society. An article written for Vanderbilt University says it best: “it negates the assumptions made because through music and appreciation of their background and culture, these individuals are able to voice their struggles, but also voice their appreciation and hope for what’s to come in their futures”. Restructuring common misleading narratives of immigrants in America to help our society better understand one another is a common theme and goal throughout Miranda’s work that is perhaps best exemplified in his hit musical Hamilton.

In the year 2022, almost everyone has heard of Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton, in which he wrote, composed, and played the lead role of Alexander Hamilton. However, the idea of a two hour and forty five minute long musical about America’s founding fathers doesn’t initially sound like the type of story to be able to receive sixteen Tony nominations and eleven Tony’s. The key factor to the success of this show is the brilliant mind of Miranda, who retold the story of Alexander Hamilton in a way that changed society’s understanding of American history and broke boundaries. Miranda was first inspired to write the musical when he first read a biography of Hamilton written by Ron Cherow that told the story of a kid who faced a tough childhood in the Caribbean, immigrated to America, established our financial system and ultimately became one of the founding fathers of this country. While in high school he had actually written a paper on Hamiton, Miranda realized that most stories and articles about him dramatically understated the effects of his impact on the American government and instead focused on the duel in which he died. So upon learning more about Hamilton’s life, Miranda made a realization about the way in which this could resonate with a larger audience. He realized,

I’ve met so many versions of this guy, and it’s the guy who comes to this country and is like, ‘I am going to work six jobs if you’re only working one. I’m gonna make a life for myself here.’ That’s a familiar storyline to me, beginning with my father and so many people I grew up with in my neighborhood. So ... every play or work of fiction kind of has to start with you identifying a character and saying, ‘I know this guy. I could write that guy.’ And I kind of ran with that.

Miranda began by writing the rap song “Alexander Hamilton” which he wrote and performed for the white house in 2009, and later wrote seven more songs which he released on a Hamilton mixtape in 2012. The many years of buildup before the show debuted in 2015 created so much buzz that the show was immediately a hit for several reasons. First, Miranda had combined musical theater, rap, hip hop, and R&B all in one show which not only shocked the world of musical theater but allowed the show to reach a much larger audience. This was an especially impressive accomplishment considering the content of the show was essentially a history lesson. Miranda’s clever idea to use popular music styles to catch the attention of audiences and make the story modern and relevant again had never before been done in musical theater. Second, Hamilton had one of the most diverse casts ever seen in a Broadway musical. The lead characters in the show, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, were all white males that were played by people of color. This leads into the third groundbreaking aspect of the show which is its ability to tell the history of America in a new light to allow society to reexamine modern day issues with a new lens.

With Hamilton, Miranda was able to successfully bring topics of racial inequality, gender discrimination, and the narrative of immigrants in America to conversations in our society and inspire social change. Miranda depicts America’s founding fathers and the key players that contributed to America’s success as flawed individuals who motivate each other to rise up against the odds and create change. The plot is largely historically accurate and makes several references acknowledging the mistakes of these men, such as owning slaves, and infidelity which allows society to reflect and hold America accountable for the mistakes made in the past. Furthermore, the work Miranda put into carefully crafting the lyrics and notions in the show helps audiences redefine their idea of immigrants in America. One of the most famous lines from the show is “immigrants, we get the job done”, sung by Lafayette, Hamilton, and Mulligan as a statement of empowerment. Here Miranda highlights that our nation was built from the efforts of those who immigrated to America and that they have a rightful place in our country. This message contrasted the highly politicized topic of immigration happening in the United States during 2015. At the time Donald Trump began to spread false narratives about immigrants from Mexico leading to large amounts of discrimination and hate crimes against immigrant and minority communities. The narrative purposely portrayed in Hamilton about immigrants is a prime example of how Miranda is able to fight for social justice issues, a key passion of his, through his art.

Miranda has continued to create a significant impact with his work to show America that many of the issues debated in America’s past still exist today, the only difference being we have an entirely new outlook as a society on these issues. In an interview for The Atlantic, Miranda spoke on the way he intended for Hamilton to change the way we view history , specifically regarding the issues debated in the show. He said:

They’re about foreign relations; they’re about states’ rights versus national rights; they’re about debt. These are all conversations we’re still having, and I think it’s a comfort to know that they’re just a part of the more perfect union we’re always working towards, or trying to work towards and that we’re always working on them. You know, we didn’t break the country; the country came with a limited warranty like it was never perfect.

Believing that America still has ways to continuously improve has sparked discourse in classrooms and daily conversations around the country. This quality is one of the key factors that highlight Miranda as a public intellectual. As Professor Steven Mack at the University of Southern California explains,

Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.

Essentially, public intellectuals are able to push society to question the current way of life and spark discussions about how to continuously improve our current state of affairs. Miranda and his work have done just this. Miranda has raised money, been politically vocal in public, and teamed up with government figures in order to bring issues he cares about to the conversation. Whether it is the dialogue around immigrants in the US, the national disasters hitting his homeland of Puerto Rico, or rights for minorities in America, Miranda is always pushing for conversation and the questioning of the status quo. While there inevitably are still critics of Miranda’s work, some believe he hasn't done enough and others claim he has gone too far, the reality is that his actions have encouraged discussion. While not everyone may agree with him or his views, Miranda has brought important issues to the table and allowed for social change to begin taking roots in casual conversation.

Lin-Manual Miranda is undoubtedly a genius mind in the world of musical theater and performing arts. His meticulously produced work has been critically acclaimed many times for its incorporation of unique plot lines, diverse casts, and shocking combinations of music genres. However, his impact and intellectualism stem much further beyond his art. Miranda’s ability to seamlessly bring social issues from the past and present into the conversations of today’s society, including people from all ethnicities, ages, and interests, is what makes him unanimously brilliant. Even Michelle Obama, who has watched Miranda’s growth since his performance in the white house in 2009, acknowledges that “he’s made history come alive and showed young people that they have a role to play in politics and public service”. Inspiring public discourse and provoking those he reaches to think about their contributions to the community is what makes Lin-Manual Miranda a true public intellectual.