Beyond Bad Bunny: 5 essential Puerto Rican history reads
A month after its debut, Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” continues to ignite conversations surrounding the island’s colonial legacy and its right to self-determination. We recommend these books to help expand your knowledge of Puerto Rican culture and history.
A month after its debut, Bad Bunny’s sixth solo studio album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” continues to ignite conversations surrounding Puerto Rico’s colonial legacy and its right to self-determination.
Dubbed his “most Puerto Rican album ever,” the record was released with 17 informative visualizers that outlined key moments in Puerto Rican history. Each installment was written by professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who used his own academic book, “Puerto Rico: A National History,” as a reference.
Beginning with the initial wave of colonization by the Spanish crown in 1508, into the 1898 U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico and the ongoing financial crisis, the history lesson provided in “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” has generated more public interest surrounding Puerto Rico’s past, present and future. Meléndez-Badillo told De Los that he considers the superstar’s album “a great learning tool about what’s happening in Puerto Rico.”
“It was [Bad Bunny’s] vision that thought about bringing Puerto Rican history into the conversation with music,” said Meléndez-Badillo.
For those looking to engage more deeply with Puerto Rican history and culture, here are five essential books (and related texts) written by Puerto Rican authors.
(Markus Wiener Publishers)
Prominent Puerto Rican historian Fernando Picó, a pioneer of Latino studies, initially published his breakthrough 1986 book in Spanish at a time when the island’s rich cultural history had been seldom chronicled. From the geological formation of the archipelago to the 21st century, Picó’s critical text spans topics ranging from indigenous culture, Spanish colonial rule, nationalist movements and class structures.
In his 2006 English-language edition, Picó updated the chapters to include social and political movements, including the fight to remove the U.S. navy from the Vieques island from 1999 to 2003. Woven into his research were the stories of common people, which shifted the island’s present-day culture. As the late academic wrote in his preface, “We are all tired of histories written from above and from the outside.”
Related reading: “Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico” by Mónica A. Jiménez
(Bold Type Books)
In “War Against All Puerto Ricans,” the author, lawyer, filmmaker and former New York state representative Nelson Antonio Denis situates the story of the 1950 Puerto Rican revolution within the larger context of U.S. military occupation — and the island’s ongoing fight for self-determination. The book delves into the formation of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, their famed former president Pedro Albizu Campos and the series of uprisings that led to his second arrest.
Through oral histories, personal interviews, and declassified FBI files, Denis explores turning points like the Ponce massacre — a peaceful civilian protest in 1937 that turned deadly — and the Utuado uprising that culminated in the bombardment of two Puerto Rican towns by the U.S. Army. “This is not a pretty story,” writes Denis in the preface.
Related reading: “Puerto Rico in the American Century” by César J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe.
(Haymarket Books)
Edited by academics Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón, “Aftershocks of Disaster” is a compilation of poems, essays and photos from Hurricane Maria survivors. The book was published in 2019, two years after the storm left thousands dead on the island. (The exact death toll remains unknown.)
The scholar duo compare the fallout to the aftershock of an earthquake, chronicling the days, months and years after the initial disaster took place. The anthology examines the social and historical impact of the hurricane on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, as well as a shifting identity of Puerto Ricans following the post-hurricane exodus from the island.
Related reading: “Ricanstruction: Reminiscing & Rebuilding Puerto Rico” by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez.
(W.W. Norton & Company)
Although a work of historical fiction, “The Taste of Sugar” is based on a series of true events that marked Puerto Rico forever, including U.S. control of the island in 1989, a devastating tropical storm and the subsequent push for laborers in Hawaiian sugar mills.
Moved by events of the past, writer Marisel Vera sets her scene on the eve of the Spanish-American war. When the San Ciriaco hurricane of 1899 brought devastation to a young couple’s small coffee farm in the mountains, stripping them of their sole source of income, they were left with no choice but to work on the sugar plantations in Hawaii — which lured roughly 5,000 other islanders with the promise of the American Dream.
Related reading: “We the Animals” by Justin Torres.
(Vintage Books)
Piri Thomas’ 1967 memoir highlights the Afro-Latino, diasporic experience in the United States prior to the civil rights movement. Born to Puerto Rican and Cuban parents during the Great Depression and raised in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, Thomas’ identity as a dark-skinned individual was contested by his family members, who refused to acknowledge his African blood.
The late writer also detailed how he became involved with criminal gang activity and drug use that eventually led him to shoot a cop and be sent to prison. At the Sing Sing correctional facility, he began to confront elements of his upbringing, which led him toward a greater level of self-acceptance. “Down These Mean Streets” was eventually honored by the New York Public Library as a “Book for the Teen Age.”
Related reading: “When I Was Puerto Rican” by Esmeralda Santiago.
The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College features a plethora of academic work as the largest university-based research institute, library, and archive dedicated to the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.
The Puerto Rico Syllabus also provides a contemporary overview of the ongoing Puerto Rican debt crisis and more.
La Impresora is an independent poetry press and risograph printing studio and poetry press based in the town of Isabela.
Editora Educación Emergente is an independent publisher dedicated to emergent content on the island. It is located in Cabo Rojo.
La Criba is a Lajas and Mexico City based publishing company interested in enriching, original content that goes beyond the surface.
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