Down These Mean Streets
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Piri Thomas
"A linguistic event. Gutter language, Spanish imagery and personal poetics . . . mingle into a kind of individual statement that has very much its own sound."--The New York Times Book ReviewThirty 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.
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More Details:
Author
Piri Thomas
Pages
Publisher
Turtleback
Published Date
1997
ISBN
0606206361 9780606206365
Community ReviewsSee all
"Well this book was recommenced to me when I was in my late teens early 20s. I'm a Newyorican and my brothers lived a very similar lifestyle so it hit close to home. There is a scene description of the character leaning against a light post smoking a cigarette it stuck with me cause my late brother may he rest in peace had a tattoo with that very image. It was how ppl remembered my brother in his younger years. Great story, great adversity and powerful message."
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