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Civic Imagination

Writing Your Own Deliverance

Through the musical genres of hip-hop, jazz, and R&B, Hamilton the Musical takes a unique modern twist on the historical tale of the life of America's first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Simply put, this musical tells the obstacles Hamilton had to face as well as the triumphs he achieved throughout his life from the beginning of his journey when he traveled to the United States from the Caribbean, through his political career, and ending shortly after the end of his life. The characters include (but not completely limited to): Alexander Hamilton, Marquis de Lafyette, Hercules Mulligan, John Laurens, Aaron Burr, George Washington, The Schuyer Sisters, and King George. The retelling of this classic story came from Lin Manuel Miranda; he was reading a biography about Alexander Hamilton and was so inspired by the story that he thought to himself that this story must be a musical. And when he found out that no one had written a musical about this, he decided to created one himself. Once the dream became a reality and was featured on Broadway in New York, it was an absolute smash hit and took the country by storm. Although I have never seen the musical in person myself, I have listened to the soundtrack a countless number of times. Specifically, the song that really speaks to me is called "My Shot". It is a song about overcoming any and all obstacles that may come your way and not missing the opportunity to achieve your dreams and ambitions in life. This musical is inspiring given that it shows the passion, ambitious and drive of one man who wanted to achieve all that he could in his life as well as the complex and interwoven stories of everyone that is also featured in the musical that added to his life, for better or for worse. It is also inspiring for me as a young , hopeful, and ambitious 20 something to find aspects of Hamilton's life that I can connect with and inspire me to continue to have gumption and drive as I pursue my own life aspirations.

I found out about this story through the enthusiasm of my friends. A large number of my friends who love musicals had found the soundtrack on Spotify and urged me to listen to it. So, one day while I was working on math homework I decided to listen to the soundtrack. And from that day on, I have been in love with this story ever since. It appealed to me because of the energy, enthusiasm, and passion. I also loved how it showcased the complex ups and downs of life and the multiple layers of characters where you realize that everyone has a story to tell and that every perspective has meaning and importance. It still resonates with me to this day and I truly believe that it will resonate with me for the rest of my life. This story is broadly known and popular throughout the United States given that so many people, across so many generations, ethnicities and backgrounds, have found their own personal connections with this story like I have. And yes, I have shared it with others in the same way that my friends urged me to show it. But, I do take it a step further by listening to the soundtrack with them and singing/rapping along.

This story can inspire because it is the story of an underdog who rose up to achieve greatness with his personal drive, motivation, and innate passion. As a result, I believe that this story can inspire social change because Hamilton's life was all about social change and making a difference that led to creating and founding the nation that I call my home country. The themes that it touches upon are triumph, struggle/frustration, betrayal, deceit, love, loss, camaraderie, family, and self empowerment.

http://www.hamiltonbroadway.com/

revolutionary, innovative, passionate, groundbreaking, history, remix, fantastic

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Contents of this tag:
5. Maus: A Survivor's Tale
10. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
12. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
14. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
17. The Lion King
22. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
24. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
28. The colonial city
29. My Dad
34. Rafael DCB
37. A Leader
42. The Myth of the Mansfield Hanging Tree
50. Fox's Creek On a hot summer night a community of animals were chased out of their home by a growing wildfire which started to burn down their forest. Mother Deer grabbed her young ones while the other animals rushed to cross the great river. Everyone showed their human instincts, pushing, kicking, and growling desperately on their way to safety. Mother Deer made it to the other side with Fawn but Mother Rabbit forgot one of her many young ones so she asked her for he
53. Train of Hope
56. Simba and the Maasai Warriors
58. Roaring Lion
61. Emmeline the Suffragist
62. Michelle S
65. The doctors' team of the Aegean sea
70. Ghada G.
75. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
77. Stephanie Q
79. Nina N.
81. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
87. The Help
104. Dana G.
105. We are all Martín Fierro
109. Nick C
115. How I "Eat, Pray, and Love"
122. Nour H
124. Out of Balance
126. Nora S
127. The Outlet It is the civil war in Venezuela. Xena and her little brother, Gabriel, live in the city where Gabriel practices his art. Xena, wants to see her brothers art and asks him to go to his studio and bring it back. Just as he reaches the car, a bomb hits the car, killing Gabriel. Xena, being extremely close to her brother, blames herself for sending him to get his art. She later finds out that the bomb was planted by the Latin Kings gang. Out of revenge, she then joins the rival gang with her friend, Shepard. In an act of revenge, her gang plants a bomb. She later learns, that the bomb she planted blew up Shepard's parents house. Feeling guilty, and knowing that Gabriel would be disappointed in these actions, she decided to make a change. In honor of Gabriel, she picks up his art, and paints the entire country of Venezuela with beautiful street art. Through this art she finds peace. The art was so beautiful and happy, that it ended the civil war, and transformed into a happy, peaceful place to live.
129. Julia B. I am a third year student at the University of Maryland in the U.S. studying Journalism with a minor in French. Writing is a passion of mine, and journalism is one of the many real world applications of writing. I hope to be able to use writing to make an impact on the world through the news and help others get the information that they need in order to be informed citizens. In my free time I like to do triathlons and write poetry.
132. A Tale of Traveler's Past A 28-30 year-old man boards a train and sits in an empty compartment. He is a weary traveller who has spent countless days trying to find transportation to reach his destination. While en route, he falls asleep and is visited from travelers from past and present journeys of who had boarded this particular train. The first visitor is Alexander Hamilton; a migrant from the Caribbean who traveled to the United States in the 1800's. He recounts his experience of traveling to a new country and achieving his dream of creating something that would outlive him. The second visitors are Art and Vladek Spiegelman; a father and son who share their story of how they migrated to a new country after the Holocaust events of World War II and their struggles of adapting into the culture of a new nation. The last visitor is a woman who comes from the Middle East who arrived in Vienna a year ago. She tells her story about the journey she experienced to reach her new home as well as the issues she's experiences now as an outcast from a land that she's still not fully settled into yet.
133. An American Chef in the Aegean: Teaching solidarity through food
134. Em/Power Love As Liz finishes her spiritual trip around the world she heads to Brazil for her final stop. She stops into a local bar where this man Sebastiao spills a glass of wine on her. From there the love story began and the couple traveled around Brazil to take photos of social injustice. One night they were out in the middle of a field where they were taking photos of an approaching comet and Sebastiao noticed something strange in the image. They went to the comet collision and found an luminescent girl standing there. She introduces herself as Em, an inter-terrestrial who warns them about the consequences of gender inequality. She says there is an outer universal counsel that judges planets according to social understandings. Em tells them that she has magic powers to empower women and helps them reach self-discover. Liz and Sebastiao take on the mission to travel around the world with Em to show the strong women all over the world. Together they take photos of social injustices while illustrating stories of women struggling to find themselves within their societies. After taking the photos with Em using her magic power given by the moon they feel they can become their own hero. Em takes the photos back to the counsel to prove that Earth is becoming a more equal society. But Liz and Sebastiao’s work of empowering women and showing social injustices will still continue.
143. Tiajna A
Contents of this tag:
3. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
4. The Lion King
6. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
8. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
9. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
11. The colonial city
16. The Infinite Forking Possibilities of the Future
21. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
24. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
26. SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence
28. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
30. Be kind to yourself
Contents of this tag:
2. Maus: A Survivor's Tale
7. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
10. My Dad
11. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
12. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
15. The Diary of Anne Frank
18. A Leader
24. Train of Hope
26. The Light at the end of a Dark Tunnel
29. Emmeline the Suffragist
33. We are all Martín Fierro
40. The Help
43. How I "Eat, Pray, and Love"
44. The doctors' team of the Aegean sea
Contents of this tag:
Contents of this tag:
2. A Tale of Traveler's Past A 28-30 year-old man boards a train and sits in an empty compartment. He is a weary traveller who has spent countless days trying to find transportation to reach his destination. While en route, he falls asleep and is visited from travelers from past and present journeys of who had boarded this particular train. The first visitor is Alexander Hamilton; a migrant from the Caribbean who traveled to the United States in the 1800's. He recounts his experience of traveling to a new country and achieving his dream of creating something that would outlive him. The second visitors are Art and Vladek Spiegelman; a father and son who share their story of how they migrated to a new country after the Holocaust events of World War II and their struggles of adapting into the culture of a new nation. The last visitor is a woman who comes from the Middle East who arrived in Vienna a year ago. She tells her story about the journey she experienced to reach her new home as well as the issues she's experiences now as an outcast from a land that she's still not fully settled into yet.