Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes Explores How Her Puerto Rican Roots Shaped Her Artistic Voice

Quiara Alegria Hudes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who’s also known for her collaboration with Lin Manuel Miranda on the Tony-winning musical “In the Heights.”

Now she’s written a deeply personal memoir called “My Broken Language” about growing up in Philadelphia with her vibrant Puerto Rican mother and abuela — her grandmother — on whose steps she heard the stories that would inspire her art.

“My Broken Language” may seem like a surprising book title for a playwright, someone who holds great command of language.

But back when Hudes entered Brown University to become a playwright, her mentor Paula Vogel, a Pultizer prize winner “full of creativity and luminosity,” told Hudes “if your Spanish is broken, then write your broken Spanish,” she says.

For Hudes, this opened up the floodgates for her to write about being from a mixed family.

“That was the permission I needed to take my broken languages and