“Papi’s there, around any corner,” says the eight-year-old girl at the heart of Papi. “But you can’t sit down and wait for him cuz that’s a longer and more painful death.”
Living in Santo Domingo, she waits for her father to come back from the United States and lavish her with the glorious rewards of his fame and fortune—shiny new cars and polo shirts, gold chains and Nikes. But when Papi does come back, he turns out to be more “like Jason, the guy from Friday the 13th,“ than a prince. Papi is a drug dealer, a man who is clearly unreliable and dangerous but nevertheless makes his daughter feel powerful and wholly, terrifyingly alive.
Drawing on her memories of a childhood split between Santo Domingo and visits with her father amid the luxuries of the United States, Rita Indiana mixes satire with a child’s imagination, horror with science fiction, in a swirling tale of a daughter’s love, the lure of crime and machismo, and the violence of the adult world.
Expertly translated into English for the first time by Achy Obejas, who renders the rhythmic lyricism of Indiana’s Dominican Spanish in language that propels the book forward with the relentless beat of a merengue, Papi is furious, musical, and full of wit—a passionate, overwhelming, and very human explosion of artistic virtuosity.
Born in Santo Domingo in 1977, Rita Indiana is the grand-niece of the soprano Ivonne Haza and great-great-great-granddaughter of the poet and hero of the Restoration War, Manuel Rodríguez Objío. She is also second cousin of the journalist Óscar Haza and of the politician Víctor Bisonó. She was baptized in honor of her great-grandmother Rita Indiana del Castillo y Rodríguez-Objío.
Indiana began her writing career with novels such as La estrategia de Chochueca and Papi, fueling her creativity with Dominican slang and colloquialisms.
Later, she decided to explore Dominican popular music, reinventing merengue dancing through her compositions and interpretations with the group Los Misterios.
Some of her songs have been written for such influential Latin American musicians as Julieta Venegas and Calle 13.
As of 2012 Rita Indiana resides in Miami.
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