Rita Indiana Hernández Sánchez (born 11 June 1977) is a Dominican writer and singer-songwriter. In 2011, she was selected by the Spanish newspaper El País as one of the 100 most influential Latino personalities. Her novels prominently feature themes of queerness while the topics of her songs range from Dominican social issues to divergent sexuality. Rita Indiana has been highly recognized and awarded on the Caribbean literary scene, and her viral music success has made Indiana a household name in the Dominican Republic where she is popularly referred to as "La Monstra" (the monster).
Early life and education
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.
Rita Indiana attended El Colegio Calasanz in Costa Rica, where her father had established a business. After finishing her schooling in Costa Rica, Rita Indiana continued her education in the Dominican Republic at Autonomous University in her birth city of Santo Domingo where she studied Art History. However, she left this course a year after admittance. Rita Indiana then attended Altos de Chavon School of Design but once again left her schooling and decided to pursue a career in writing.
Literary career
Rita Indiana admits to having a passion for reading and writing from a young age. The work that first sparked her interest in literature was Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. She credits her style of writing regarding marginalized youth to Twain's similar subject matter.
Rita Indiana began her writing career with short stories in the mid 1990s, shortly after leaving Autonomous University. At the age of eighteen, Rita Indiana published her first short stories in the only literary magazine in the Dominican Republic at the time. After leaving Altos de Chavon School of Design, she was able to write and publish her first novel La Estrategia de Chochueca in 2000. La Estrategia de Chochueca belongs to her trilogy La trilogía de niñas locas, which also include Papi (2005), and Nombres y Animales (2013). These are peppered with Dominican slang and colloquialisms and center around exploring the social issues present in the Dominican Republic. This trilogy also introduced themes of nonconforming sexual identity not previously highlighted in Dominican Literature. Her early work is highly regarded for its authentic portrayal of Caribbean life and is now studied in literature courses across the United States and the Caribbean.
Rita Indiana later explored the genre of science fiction with her novel La mucama de Omicunlé (2017). She made this shift to science fiction after noticing the drastic differences in technological and social development across the Caribbean. Rita Indiana also finds that this genre lends itself to more critical social and political commentary that she has previously not been able to access in past pieces. La mucama de Omicunlé became the first Spanish-language work to receive the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers. In 2019, the same book, translated to English, was published as Tentacle. Her sixth novel, Made in Saturn, will be published by And Other Stories in 2020.
Music career
Rita Indiana moved to Puerto Rico in the mid 2000s and began exploring the realm of music despite never taking music lessons or showing much interest in the music industry. Eventually, she produced the single "Altar Epandex in duo with Miti Miti" after discovering her ear for creating electro-merengue beats on music computer software. This single was very well received and was chosen by New York City's Daily News as one of the top 5 indie jewels of 2008. Rita Indiana's sound is heavily inspired by Dominican popular music, including meringue and salsa . She is often credited with reinventing merengue dancing through her compositions and interpretations of Afro-Caribbean rhythms and electric beats. In 2009, Rita Indiana banded with a group known as Los Misterios and together they went on to release several more singles along with a complete album titled El Juidero in 2010. This album married the sounds of analog and digital music and reached viral success across several online plat forms.