ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ 2008 musical In the Heights and the 2009 bilingual revival of West Side Story with translations by Miranda. It argues that these musicals reiterate, resist, and/or transform experiences of trauma and healing through linguistic intervention, including techniques of bilingualism, translation, and rap that address migrant-related, patriarchal, generational, and/or colonial trauma. Through close analysis of Spanish-language and translated passages, this chapter illuminates ways in which translation and cultural transmission work together in the representative musicals to act through trauma and demonstrate caregiving both within and external to the worlds of the plays. This chapter further posits that these acts of linguistic manipulation and translation represent Miranda’s first and second phases in becoming a perceived public “healer” figure. Finally, this chapter draws upon Deborah Kapchan’s definition of “trash talk” as a mode of language production that produces a sense of belonging to argue that trash talk is a mode of defiant joy.
