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Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights : We are the next American story
Lin-Manuel Miranda, left, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the duo behind the Tony-winning musical, confer on set of the film. MUST CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures
This image released by Warner Bros. Entertainment shows Dascha Polanco, from left, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Stephanie Beatriz in a scene from In the Heights. (Macall Polay/Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP)
In the Heights Knows the Second-Generation American’s Dilemma Carlos Aguilar
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
sueñitos, or “little dreams.”
There’s Nina (played by Leslie Grace), a student back from Stanford University who is afraid of betraying her values; the businesswoman Daniela (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who has been priced out of her storefront; Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), a fashion visionary trying and failing to lease a downtown apartment. Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), the entrepreneurial 20-something owner of a corner bodega eager to return to his childhoo
Washington Heights is that multicultural neighborhood just north of Harlem in New York City. I’ve been there many times and noticed its slow gentrification. I went there again this week