The Atlantic
In the Heights Knows the Second-Generation American’s Dilemma
In the new musical, restless young adults are torn between a beloved neighborhood and dreams of escape. But Abuela Claudia, the community’s matriarch, suggests a different way of thinking.
In the Heights.
In The Heights, the director Jon M. Chu’s Hollywood adaptation of the groundbreaking Broadway musical, is ostensibly a tale about the aspirational young. Its focus stays mostly on some dreamers (and a “Dreamer”) living in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. They form an ensemble cast of working-class Latino characters—immigrants and American-born—chasing far-fetched but not entirely implausible