I love finding things like this! In some ways, Lizzo used the finale from Sister Act 2 as a mentor text.
Here's the clip from the end of Sister Act 2:
And here's Lizzo's performance from 2019, clearly inspired by Sister Act 2:
You can call it inspiration. You can call it walking in someone else shoes. I call it a mentor text. Sometimes what we create from a mentor text is completely our own but lately I've found it hard to completely create something on my own so I've been using mentor texts almost as a frame for my own creating. I did some mission and vision work for Story Exploratory and I looked at an article an educator wrote about dual language education and I fit my ideas into the framework the writer had created with his article. I had an idea for a book and I looked at what an author had done to set up their book on craft.
Especially when it comes to play and experimenting or drafting, I believe it's completely okay to use mentor texts and model your writing or any kind of creativity off of others. I love looking at the parallels from Sister Act 2 and Lizzo's performance and being reminded that anything is a mentor text and that mentor texts come in different formats.
And just because Lizzo is cool and I appreciate more Lizzo in my life, here is her performance at NPR's Tiny Desk and her Instagram if you want to check them out.
