Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in Spanish Harlem,[1] a section of Harlem with a large Puerto Rican population. The book follows Piri through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism (in both New York City and elsewhere), travels, succumbs to heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, is imprisoned, and is finally released.
One of the major themes of Down These Mean Streets centers on Piri Thomas's identity as a dark-complexioned Puerto Rican. Although he is of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, he is seen as black rather than Hispanic or Latino. His own family rejects the African aspect of their Latino-Caribbean ancestry, causing Piri to spend much of his youth and early adult life contemplating his racial and ethnic identity.
The book was originally published in 1967. A special Thirtieth Anniversary Edition in 1997 included a new afterword from the author. A sequel, 7 Long Times, gives more depth to his prison years.
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Spade". The Thrilling Detective Web Site. Retrieved 2023-02-11. "Dashiell Hammett Tour". Up and DownTheseMeanStreets. 2011-01-09. Retrieved 2023-02-11....
shelves. The others were Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; DownTheseMeanStreets by Piri Thomas; The Best Short Stories of Negro Writers, edited...
Representations of Justice, Bern, Peter Lang, (2007) 23–37 Kincaid, Andrew. "DownTheseMeanStreets": The City and Critique in Contemporary Irish Noir Éire-Ireland...
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Oscar Wao, adapted and directed by Elise Thoron, and Piri Thomas' DownTheseMeanStreets adapted and directed by Wynn Handman. Literature to Life's new...
union laborer. Sean O'Hagan in The Observer described Steacy's DowntheseMeanStreets (2012) as "a merging of his own photographs with newspaper clippings...
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Destruction of Illusions (2003), ISBN 0-7653-4407-6 Spider-Man: DownTheseMeanStreets (2005), ISBN 1-4165-0968-2 (reprinted in Spider-Man: The Darkest...
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American Language. (2004) Piri Thomas wrote the autobiography DownTheseMeanStreets (1967) using Spanglish phrases. Yoss' science fiction novel Super...
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