Down These Mean Streets

Blurb

Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in El Barrio, a section of Harlem that has a large Puerto Rican population. The book follows Piri as he goes through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism, suffers through heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, and ends up in prison.
Down These Mean Streets is a memoir of experiences of racial prejudice and discrimination, identity formation, and youthful involvement with crime that leads to life-altering prison experiences. One of the major themes of Down These Mean Streets centers on Piri Thomas's identity as a dark-complexioned Afro-Latino. Although he is of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, the larger American society sees him as an African-American and fails to recognize him as Latino. His own family rejects the African aspect of their Latin-Caribbean ancestry, causing Piri to spend much of his adolescent and early adult life contemplating his racial and ethnic identity.