Down These Mean Streets Pdf Download

Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery--a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri was sent to prison for shooting a cop.
As he recounts the journey that took him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence, Piri Thomas gives us a book that is as exultant as it is harrowing and whose every page bears the irrepressible rhythm of its author's voice. Thirty years after its first appearance, this classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence is available in an anniversary edition with a new Introduction by the author.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

Publication Details

Down These Mean Streets Pdf Download Pdf

Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban. Create a book Download as PDF Printable version.

Chapters 1 through 5 Summary and Analysis

John Thomas, known to family and friends as Piri, is a child during the Great Depression and grows up in New York. His mother is a light-skinned Puerto Rican and his father is very dark. Piri takes his dark coloring from his father and spends his life trying to balance the need to fit in with his need to acknowledge his African American background. From the time he is twelve, he knows his father treats him differently from his siblings and he attributes it to his own dark-skinned appearance.

Down These Mean Streets Pdf Download Torrent

At twelve, Piri is walking down a street thinking he is never again going to be in a position to be hit by his father. He walks and wishes he had decided to run away during the daylight hours rather than at night. He finally considers that his father is...