Down These Mean Streets: A Memoir

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.

Author: Piri Thomas
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 11/25/1997
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 7.96h x 5.32w x 0.77d
ISBN: 9780679781424
13th Anniversary Edition