Down These Mean Streets

by THOMAS, PIRI

• ISBN13: 9780679781424
• ISBN10: 0679781420
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-11-25
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

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.

Author Biography

PIRI THOMAS was born of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928. Poverty in the ghetto led him to drugs, youth gangs, and a series of criminal activities, for which he served seven years in prison. There he began his life of rehabilitation, vowing to use his street and prison experience to turn youths away from lives of crime. Mr. Thomas then lectured at schools and universities across the country, and authored several books including Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand; Seven Long Times; and Stories from El Barrio. He died in 2011, at the age of 83.

Table of Contents

HARLEM	3	(78)
1. Cutting Out	3	(5)
2. Puerto Rican Paradise	8	(6)
3. Playing It Smooth	14	(10)
4. Alien Turf	24	(15)
5. Home Relief	39	(8)
6. If You Ain't Got Heart, You Ain't Got Nada	47	(17)
7. Little Red Schoolhouse	64	(6)
8. In Business	70	(11)
SUBURBIA	81	(14)
9. Babylon for the Babylonians	81	(7)
10. But Not for Me	88	(7)
HARLEM	95	(36)
11. How to Be a Negro Without Really Trying	95	(10)
12. My Marine Tiger	105	(14)
13. Hung Up Between Two Sticks	119	(12)
SUBURBIA	131	(26)
14. Learning Some New ABC's	131	(11)
15. Brothers Under the Skin	142	(7)
16. Funeral for a Prodigal Son	149	(8)
DOWN SOUTH	157	(38)
17. Gonna Find Out What's Shakin'	157	(12)
18. Barroom Sociology	169	(10)
19. Las Aguas del Sur	179	(16)
HARLEM	195	(46)
20. Home, Sweet Harlem	195	(5)
21. Hung Down	200	(11)
22. Real Jesse Jameses	211	(12)
23. Wish It Were You, Trina	223	(5)
24. If You're Gonna Pray--Then Pray Big	228	(13)
PRISON	241	(68)
25. The House of "Do-Right"	241	(7)
26. Breaking In	248	(7)
27. Mucho Days and Nights in Gray	255	(7)
28. Sex in the Can	262	(7)
29. No More Mananas for Us, Trina	269	(6)
30. Sweatin', Man, Sweatin'	275	(13)
31. God, Ain't You for Everybody?	288	(10)
32. Great, Man, Great; I'm Thinking Like a Stone Philosopher	298	(11)
NEW YORK TOWN	309	(24)
33. Free Side Is the Best Side	309	(9)
34. Hey, Barrio--I'm Home	318	(9)
35. I Swears to God and the Virgin	327	(6)
Afterword to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition	333	(6)
Glossary	339