United States | Spanish 312 Blog

I enjoyed reading this week’s book “Papi” by Rita Indiana, not only because of the themes it explores, but especially because of how the writer adapted the story of the novel to the perspective of a kid, who is the narrator. The narrator is a young girl from the Dominican Republic who talks about her father, “Papi”, who left her, her mom, and the rest of the family behind to migrate to the United States. He is not present in their lives anymore, at least in a physical way, and they don’t see each other very often, sometimes every few months, or even every few years. She doesn’t really know when he will come back, but we can see how in the back of her mind, although she claims to sometimes forget about him, she has the hope that he will be back soon. Here is when he see the story through the eyes of a young girl, who seems to not fully understand the situation and is still waiting for her father to return. However, at the same time, she also feels abandoned by him and expresses anger and hate towards the absent figure of Papi, partly because she mimics her mom’s and grandmother’s opinions.

We can see throughout the story that the father not only left to work in the US and earn money, but he also has a new life, goes out with other women, and even had other kids. As the narrator explains, on he didn’t visit on Christmas, but they would receive cards from him “signed by Papi and one of his girlfriends and one of my new little siblings.” The narrator is clearly affected by her father’s absence, but she has conflicting perspectives and opinions about her father. On the one hand, we can observe her feeling of resent, but on the other hand, a feeling of admiration. This feeling of admiration towards Papi is one of the elements of the book that transmit more innocence and portray how naive kids can be in these situations. However, it also portrays the cultural and historical mindset that Dominicans had back then about people who left the island to live in the US and became wealthy, as discussed in the conversation with Arturo Victoriano.

Despite feeling abandoned, she also demonstrates admiration to her father’s success and wealth after constructing a life abroad. She talks about how her dad has so much money that he can’t fit it inside his wallet, and in an innocent way, she explains to the readers how Papi uses that money to buy her numerous things, an obvious way of also buying her forgiveness. “Then Papi goes shopping. And I go with him. Cuz he’s my dad and I’m his daughter. And Papi buys so many things, I forget how many.” The narrator brags about her father’s wealth multiple times, mentioning his outfits, the cars he owns, or his golden chains, which were signs of success. In my opinion, restating her father’s wealth and material possessions is the girl’s way of justifying her father’s absence in her life, which I guess would be the mindset of many kids in that situation.

What do you think about the narrator’s opinions and feelings towards Papi? Why do you think the story would be different if the narrator was an adult talking about her childhood instead of having a child as a narrator?

Although the book “Yo-Yo Boing” has a disperse, non-linear structure, I enjoyed reading it while I slowly discovered its unique character. The book is a collection of conversations, showing love, passion, anger, and arguments about diverse topics. There is not a very obvious transition between one topic and the other, sometimes making it hard to follow, but as I Spanish and English speaker, I was able to better understand these conversations and some of the expressions used. The author explains that she obtained some of her ideas from conversations she listened to and experienced, which were inspirational for her in a time of hope and prosperity for the US and the world. There is even a conversation where the characters are arguing about writing a book, and one of them is asking for help to the other or for a peaceful environment to be able to write: “My book needs your English. – The dialogues are fine the way they are. I think we should dedicate to the structure. – When do we start? – This weekend. – I have a dinner. – Again? It’s the only time I have to work.”

The author of the book is a Puerto Rican writer who has lived for many years in New York City. With her literature and specifically with this book, the writer intends to portray the bilingualism and biculturalism of people like her, who emigrated to a place with a different culture, language, and environment. Therefore, the book intends to show this “fight” between languages, specifically between her native language, Spanish, and the language she had to become proficient at growing up and in NYC, English. This implicitly shows a “fight” or clash of cultures through language, showing that English, representing her life in the US, is something new that she is adapting to while she can’t let go of Spanish, representing her heritage from Puerto Rico.

A remarkable aspect of this book is the switches between English and Spanish, as it is written in both languages. The author claims this is a portrayal of her struggle while writing the book, as she didn’t want to write a book entirely in English, but at the same time, she was living in the US mainland, so she couldn’t write it fully in Spanish either. Therefore, she is portraying “the struggle of the emigrant”. This is something that happens to a lot of people I know who immigrated to English-speaking countries, including myself. My bilingual routine, as well as Giannina’s and every other bilingual emigrant, makes you sometimes forget certain words in one of the languages and automatically switch to the other one. These language switches not only show the complex nature of bilingualism, but in my opinion, also show certain emotions in the characters. When I read a combination of English and Spanish in the middle of the characters’ conversation, I could especially sense confusion and anger. For instance, in the conversation when the narrator is talking about the benefits of always being suspicious or “uncomfortable”: “Dónde. A tu lomo. – Coño. Respiro aire fresco y me siento bien. Te lo juro. I’m not ready for another tragedy, really, who’s ever ready for a tragedy.”

Did you enjoy the bilingual nature of this book or did it make you get lost more often? If the book was translated into only one language, would the reader get a similar experience out of the thoughts and conversations of the characters?