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Down These Mean Streets
Down These Mean Streets
Author: Piri Thomas
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 ...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780394719849
ISBN-10: 0394719840
Publication Date: 3/12/1974
Pages: 357
Rating:
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
 5

3.7 stars, based on 5 ratings
Publisher: Vintage
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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reviewed Down These Mean Streets on + 6 more book reviews
I had to read this book for a university class, and I couldn't put it down. That is a rare thing. ;)

From the back cover: In this classic confessional autobiography--first published in 1967 and firmly in the tradition of Eldridge Cleaver's _Soul on Ice_ and _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_--Piri Thomas, a man of African and Puerto Rican descent living in Spanish Harlem, powerfully relates how he was lost even within his own family and sought his identity through drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery, nearly becoming yet another statistic by the age of twenty-two. His downward spiral from the barrio to Sing Sing is keenly and wisely described, as is his redemption, one found through suffering, endurance, and desire for understanding.


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