Por estas calles bravas (Down These Mean Streets) by Piri Thomas, Suzanne Dod Thomas

Synopsis

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 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. Thirty years after its first appearance, this classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence is available in an anniversary edition with a new Introduction by the author.

Annotation

"Long-overdue translation of classic novel Down these mean streets (New York: Knopf, 1967), which was important for the development of US Puerto Rican literature. This bildungsroman focuses on the adolescent life of the author, a black Puerto Rican growing up in Spanish Harlem in the 1960s. The novel introduces important issues of racial discrimination, intergenerational and ethnic conflict, and the overall marginalization of Puerto Ricans during those years"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Library Journal

It's astonishing that we had to wait two years for the Spanish edition of Angela's Ashes--and over 30 years for the translation of Tom s's Down These Mean Streets, a classic that first introduced the barrio to wider audiences. But at least they're here. It's also a treat to have this memoir from Jim nez, Cuban born and now a leading literary scholar living in the United States. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.