Dear Mr. Hamilton by Ariana Quinez Lyrics
Dear Lin-Manuel Miranda,
As a woman of color and a descendant of immigrants, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Founding Father narrative.
In school I learned that the Founding Fathers were rebels and geniuses. Free-thinkers full of contradictions. They set the world on fire, seemingly creating a lasting nation through sheer force of will. The world was waiting for them to fail, but they chose to push through and fight and write and scream and claw their way towards the completion of a country, bickering with each other the entire way there because they understood that the stakes were so incredibly high.
They stood for this idea that I so desperately wanted to believe: that anything in this country is possible if you only have the tenacity and brilliance to make it happen. I felt a kinship to their kind of hopeless idealism. And yet, sitting in class with my history book, a part of me also understood that there was an inherent separation between the founding of my country and me.
As a Mexican-American, the books in school tell me I am either the villain or the footnote in my own history. As a woman of color, I understand that regardless of my own abilities, the Founding Fathers would have never made space for me in the “the room where it happens.” I’m forced to recognize that our American history is fraught with both pride and terror, and that just as these men fought for their freedom, they also denied the most basic rights to others. This country has given my family so much, and for that I am grateful. But I am also forced to acknowledge that when the Founding Fathers were fighting for freedom, they didn’t know they were fighting for me.
But history belongs to those who write it, and with Hamilton, you’ve created a narrative where we can not only belong to our country’s founding as people of color, but unite under an umbrella of pride. That incessant struggle to prove one’s own self-worth is at the heart of the Founding Father narrative, and with Hamilton, it becomes a parallel to the struggle that people of color go through living in a country that is still dealing with its own issues regarding race.
You’ve helped us take back our history, because while they didn’t value us then, in casting our brown faces, you’re forcing them to see us now. Using our music, you’ve ensured they hear our voices. As people of color, we’re so often divided by what we look like and where we come from, but you’ve reminded us that we are similar in our struggles of oppression, and that we are stronger when we stand together. As you wave your Puerto Rican flag high, you somehow allow us the space to celebrate the beauty of our differences, while still uniting under the shared humanity of our American spirit.
Thank you.
As a woman of color and a descendant of immigrants, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Founding Father narrative.
In school I learned that the Founding Fathers were rebels and geniuses. Free-thinkers full of contradictions. They set the world on fire, seemingly creating a lasting nation through sheer force of will. The world was waiting for them to fail, but they chose to push through and fight and write and scream and claw their way towards the completion of a country, bickering with each other the entire way there because they understood that the stakes were so incredibly high.
They stood for this idea that I so desperately wanted to believe: that anything in this country is possible if you only have the tenacity and brilliance to make it happen. I felt a kinship to their kind of hopeless idealism. And yet, sitting in class with my history book, a part of me also understood that there was an inherent separation between the founding of my country and me.
As a Mexican-American, the books in school tell me I am either the villain or the footnote in my own history. As a woman of color, I understand that regardless of my own abilities, the Founding Fathers would have never made space for me in the “the room where it happens.” I’m forced to recognize that our American history is fraught with both pride and terror, and that just as these men fought for their freedom, they also denied the most basic rights to others. This country has given my family so much, and for that I am grateful. But I am also forced to acknowledge that when the Founding Fathers were fighting for freedom, they didn’t know they were fighting for me.
But history belongs to those who write it, and with Hamilton, you’ve created a narrative where we can not only belong to our country’s founding as people of color, but unite under an umbrella of pride. That incessant struggle to prove one’s own self-worth is at the heart of the Founding Father narrative, and with Hamilton, it becomes a parallel to the struggle that people of color go through living in a country that is still dealing with its own issues regarding race.
You’ve helped us take back our history, because while they didn’t value us then, in casting our brown faces, you’re forcing them to see us now. Using our music, you’ve ensured they hear our voices. As people of color, we’re so often divided by what we look like and where we come from, but you’ve reminded us that we are similar in our struggles of oppression, and that we are stronger when we stand together. As you wave your Puerto Rican flag high, you somehow allow us the space to celebrate the beauty of our differences, while still uniting under the shared humanity of our American spirit.
Thank you.