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 fam...