Down These Mean Streets
Author: Thomas, Piri
ISBN: 9780679781424
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 25 Nov 1997
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback / softback
A modern classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence-and a lyrical memoir of coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem.
"A report from the guts and heart of a submerged population group ... It claims our attention and emotional response."-The New York Times Book Review
Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating memoir. 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.
ISBN: 9780679781424
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 25 Nov 1997
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback / softback
A modern classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence-and a lyrical memoir of coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem.
"A report from the guts and heart of a submerged population group ... It claims our attention and emotional response."-The New York Times Book Review
Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating memoir. 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.
