How Lin-Manuel Miranda and His Family Made Giving Back Their Tradition
QH: Luz and Luis, you’re both so engaged and active. Was that always part of your relationship?
Luis Miranda: Always. For our first date we went to see a group doing Puerto Rican protest music. It was not a fancy show. Luz says all the time, I should have known, given our first date, that life was going be a roller coaster. The first time we went out together, not on a date, we went to a march in DC to protest.
Luz Towns-Miranda: It’s interesting, because before we met, both he and I were socially committed. In college I was part of the demonstrations in DC against the Vietnam War. I didn’t get arrested on May Day [during the 1971 protests] because cops thought I looked like a little kid.
QH: When you were younger, did you understand the importance of things like campaigning?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: If there’s drudge work, it’s collecting signatures. We’d go to the projects on 10th Avenue, and we’d start at the top of the building and ring doorbells until we got to the bottom of the building. Next project, go all the way up, go down. Collecting signatures and handing out pamphlets for candidates for us was the equivalent of a paperboy job if you’re a kid growing up in the suburbs.
Luz Miranda-Crespo: I hated that part! As I got older they would leave me in the campaign office, and at the end of the night, when they would start getting the polling numbers, I would have a spreadsheet.
Luis Miranda: What I’m hearing is that you guys had a fantastic adolescence.
QH: Do you bring your kids to the kinds of events your parents brought you to?
Luis Crespo: We’re blessed and, to a certain extent, trying to break their bubble every opportunity we get to do so. My wife does a good job; the kids know all the causes that we support. I’ve gotten such a second education being part of the family.
Vanessa Nadal: There’s no way for the next generation, especially Lin and my kids, not to do it. We’ve generated so much wealth, and what else do you do with that? I don’t feel the need to drastically change my life and suddenly wear only designer clothing or take private planes anytime I go anywhere.
QH: For the second generation, is there a connection between the generous energy that your parents have with their community engagement and your own creative generosity?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think the relentlessness is our birthright. My sister and I have talked about this a lot. One of the things that we both had trouble with in high school, when it came to relating to our fellow adolescents, was the notion of hanging out. That was not a thing we were good at. It was, like, So we’re just gonna sit here? I think, because our parents were so active all the time, that felt somehow like cheating.
Luz Miranda-Crespo: We needed a purpose, and they needed to know where I was. I remember if I wanted to stay after school, I’d have to get a quarter and call their offices and hope that they were there. If they weren’t, I had to go home.
QH: It seems as if the family trade is civic engagement, but in terms of your actual trainings, they’re all disparate. Lin, is #EduHam the kind of thing that you could have done in isolation, without your family members, or did you actually need them?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: Everything I did prepared me to write Hamilton. And it’s almost like everything Luis Miranda has been doing all his life prepared him for #EduHam. As soon as we knew Hamilton was going to be a hot ticket, we realized we had to prioritize kids or we’d have lost. Because if this is the kind of thing where only the richest people can go to see it, and kids aren’t prioritized, this is not gonna happen. Because my dad has worked in the not-for-profit sector and the for-profit sector, because he knows how the school system functions, because he’s worked with national campaigns, it was the perfect gig for him.
Luz Towns-Miranda: The #EduHam program has really been a dream of mine and of Lin-Manuel’s since he was a teacher and he saw the difference a teacher could make. The idea that these kids were being given an opportunity to develop their own creative ideas around a true historical event and then see Hamilton—kids who would never have gotten to see a Broadway show—I think it’s life-changing.
