It's one of those books I pick up for motivation and to get an understanding about life in New York before my time. ( )

Its a very good book however, if you have already read "Manchild in the promised land" by Claude Brown do, not read this book. You might feel as I did in that you might find you're just reading a Latino version. ( )

Coming of age in Spanish Harlem that resulted in violence and prison.

263/337
The book Down These Mean Streets was about a young boy Piri (who is also the author) growning up in the streets of New York, exspecially Harlem. It talks about how since he was a dark skinned Puerto Rican, and at that time if you were black you were seen as nasty and a outcast to everyone. So what Piri had to do was make a name for himself everytime they moved to a new neighborhood. There family was very poor and the dad worked very hard and was very abusive to the children. Piri always felt that there dad seemed to always blame everything on him. During the corse of the book he goes through drufs, drinking, moving away, a death, sex ect.
Piri always felt he had to prove something to someone. He was a very weak minded person, meaning that under peer pressure he would do anything. Which i do not relate to but i do know the feeling of being asked to do something you know is bad. To describehis character in a few words it would be,"loving, scared, and lost." at the beginning of the book he had a lot of friends because the neighborhood they lived in was also Puerto Ricans. But when he moved into other races neighborhoods, such as the Italian neighborhood he moved into the first day he was there he got jumped by three Italian kids for his skin color. After this he fought to get his respect and it seemed to get the respect from all of the block his family had to move.
something i didn't like about this book is that they talk too much in spanish. they have a dictionary in the back for this, but it sucks having to go in the back and look up a word.
if i was to recommend this book to anyone i would recommend it to my cousin and my friend Adam because both have read a book by Piri Thomas. ( )