Border Environments: Dialogue on Tentacle and Mandinga Times - Rita Indiana Hernández

Rita Indiana Hernández is a Dominican writer, musician, and performer. In addition to her popularity as a singer-songwriter, she is widely regarded as one of the most important Dominican authors of her generation. Her viral music success has made Rita a household name in the Dominican Republic where she is popularly referred to as "La Montra" (the monster). Her literary career began in the 1990s with short works included in zines such as Vetas. Around the time she published her second novel, Papi, she began experimenting with musical and visual projects as part of different performance groups, such as Casifull and Miti Miti. Her popularity as a musician grew even more after the 2010 release of the album El juidero, recorded with her band Rita Indiana y los Misterios. She subsequently published two more novels, Nombres y animales (2013) and her science fiction experimental novel,  La mucama de Omicunlé (Tentacle 2015). Her focus on dismantling mythologies and rebuilding from the rubble appears in her most recent novel, Made in Saturn (2020). She was also named one of the one hundred most influential Latino/a personalities by the Spanish newspaper El País. Daniel Alarcón describes her 2021 album "Mandinga Times" as “apocalyptic” in his New Yorker review; she calls it a songbook for the end of the world

Co-Sponsored by: LACS, Latina/o Studies Program, the Migrations Grand Challenge Mellon Grant, and Department of Comparative Literature.