In the first lines of Papi, author Rita Indiana positions the central character of her novel somewhere along the spectrum of actuality and feverish nightmare. The narrator, Papi's eight-year-old daughter, describes him as a cross between Freddy Krueger and Jason, though what's scariest is the effect his terrifying power has on his family: "Sometimes when I hear that scary music," his daughter says, "I get really happy cuz I know he might be coming this way." Despite Papi's devastating violence, his daughter conflates her fear with excitement, and instead of running from him the way she should, she's drawn to him.
Papi is a neglectful man, a drug dealer from the Dominican Republic. To his smitten daughter, though, the hold he has over his fearful community looks affectionate and fatherly. Because the girl is never truly aware of what is going on, the action of the novel vacillates between stark reality and the twisted fantasies of a child. There is, purposefully, no reliable timing or place. In one passage, she witnesses Papi murder a man and it goes by in a single sentence: "I open the door and raise my doll to show the fat man my watch, but the fat man is on the ground while Papi tries to wake him up with a kick to the head as he cleans his pistol."
The scene is emblematic of the novel, told in the rhythmic, unfocused style of a child trying to reconcile a naïve trust of her father with the horrible actions she sees him take. --Josh Potter