"How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance." written by Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau is onsale now at La Tienda en MOLAA.
Global superstar Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, like many other Puerto Ricans, has lived a life marked by public crises—blackouts, hurricanes, political corruption and oppression, among others—that have exposed the ongoing impacts of colonialism in Puerto Rico. Offering a portrait of the past and future of Puerto Rican resistance through one of its loudest and proudest voices, P FKN R draws on interviews with musicians, politicians, and journalists as well as ethnographic research to set Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican resistance in a historical, political, and cultural context. Authors Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau—creators of the “Bad Bunny Syllabus”—demonstrate Bad Bunny’s place in a long tradition of infusing both joy and protest into music and honor the many evolving forms of daily resistance to oppression and colonialism that are part of Puerto Rican life.
Vanessa Díaz
Vanessa Díaz is Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is a multimedia ethnographer and journalist whose work focuses on issues of race, gender, and labor in popular culture across the Americas. Vanessa is author of the book Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke 2020) and director of the bilingual documentary film Cuban HipHop: Desde el Principio (2006). She has written for such outlets as the Washington Post, USA Today, Latina, Rolling Stone and People magazine.
Petra Rivera-Rideau
Petra Rivera-Rideau is Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies at Wellesley College. Petra’s research explores race, popular music, Puerto Rico, and Latinx identities. She is the author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico and Fitness Fiesta! Selling Latinx Culture through Zumba, both with Duke University Press. She is co-editor of Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. She has also written for popular media outlets like LA Times, Washington Post, and Latina. She has served as a consultant on several reggaetón projects, including Bad Bunny’s 2023 Coachella headlining set.
Together, Petra and Vanessa co-authored the book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke 2026) and co-created the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project. At LMU, Vanessa teaches the course “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” and at Wellesley, Petra teaches the course “Bad Bunny: Race, Gender, and Empire in Reggateón” which have both been featured in countless media outlets and were even discussed by Bad Bunny himself on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.