Down These Mean Streets

Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003)

Introduction / Background History

Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime took its toll and he served seven years of nightmarish incarceration at hard labor. But, with the knowledge that he had not been born a criminal, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, and he vowed to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard-core youth and turn them away from a life of crime.

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 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 continues to touch the souls of all who read Down These Mean Streets.

Born in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father, Thomas struggled for his survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. He lived among poverty, racism, and street crime. His autobiography, Down These Mean Streets, published in 1967, made "el barrio" (the neighborhood) a household word to non-Spanish speaking readers (Fisher 2003).

In the 1930s when he was growing up, "they didn't know whether to call me nigger or spic" (Fisher 2003). So they called him both. "I'm not a nigger and I'm not a spic," he would reply, "I'm a human being" (Fisher 2003). His words reflect his mother's wisdom. When his mother, Dolores Monta-ez Tomas, witnessed her child's anger, she'd say:

No color was born to be superior and no color born to be inferior. All color is born to be beautiful decoration, like the flower gardens of the earth. Nobody's better than you, son.

We are not minorities. We are all majorities of one, similar to each other, but like fingerprints, not quite the same. (qtd. In Fisher 2003)

Piri's father, Juan Tomas, had been raised in an orphanage in Cuba by missionaries. He migrated to Puerto Rico at the age of sixteen; his intention was to enter the United States as a Puerto Rican. After all, he reasoned, Puerto Ricans and Cubans were "kissing cousins" (Fisher 2003). Tired of living on colonized islands, he ventured to live "in the belly of the shark" (Fisher 2003). He was brought to the United Sates by friends and dumped in Harlem at the age of seventeen. Life there was rugged. Though he was trained to be a tailor, he could only find menial jobs. He changed his name from Tomas to the anglicized, Thomas, something he would be ashamed of for the rest of his life (Fisher 2003).

Born John Thomas, the younger Tomas disliked his name, and so adopted Piri, from the word, "spirit" (Fisher 2003). Though not a talkative person, his father did imbue him with an interest in Cuba and took him to political meetings to hear, among others, Vito Marcantonio, a staunch champion of justice and human rights for the poor and independence for Puerto Rico (Fisher 2003).

Piri's mother was visiting from Bayam n, Puerto Rico, when she met her husband-to-be. She was light complexioned, Juan was dark, so their seven children ranged from fair to dark-skinned. From his mother, Piri gained spiritual insight, but never could relate to spirituality in the context of priests or organized religion, unless it was in the sense of sharing and respect for human dignity (Fisher 2003).

As an adult, Piri has long believed that we all need each other. His mother, a Seventh Day Adventist, wanted him to become a minister. But writing was in his blood. Piri always had a flair for words. Once scolded by an irate teacher for speaking Spanish, he determined to master the English language (Fisher 2003). Spanish, he knew from his parents; English, he had picked up on the streets. His mother was a great storyteller, passing on to him folklore of Puerto Rico.

Prison & Censorship

One day Piri Thomas put a big notebook on the table in his prison cell during a seven-year stretch for armed robbery and said to the book, "I want to tell you a story." He began writing. Thomas had forgotten that he had failed English in school. By his own admission he "didn't know an adjective from a pronoun from a hole in the ground" (Fisher 2003). Thus, he began to write his book phonetically until he went to high school in prison and received his diploma. Upon his release, he expressed his concern for his brothers and sisters in Harlem by working with street gangs there (Fisher 2003).

On Thomas' first visit to Puerto Rico, he drank in the beauty of the scenery, and the ugliness of colonialism. He was offered a scholarship towards a doctorate in psychology at the University of Puerto Rico (http://www.peacehost.com2000). But after a few months, he found it too boring. His years in prison had been a learning experience beyond what he could learn in college. Piri decided that he wanted his doctorate in the art of living, rather than in academics. He worked for a time as assistant to the Director of the Hospital of Psychiatry in R'o Piedras. As an ex-addict, he was able to help develop a successful program of rehabilitation for addicts (http://www.peacehost.com2000).

In protesting the removal of Down These Mean Streets from some libraries, Piri related how much the library had meant to him in his childhood. He used to spend a great deal of time in the library, borrowing the allotted two books and slipping three or four more under his coat. Through books he had learned of the world outside (Fisher 2003).

Campaigns to remove books from school curricula and libraries go back decades (Heins 2003). In one incident in 1975, seven members of the school board in a Long Island, New York town called Island Trees ordered the removal from school libraries of nine books that had been listed as "objectionable" by a local conservative group. They included Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets, Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape, and Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, edited by Langston Hughes (Heins 2003).

The school board members explained that they had been told the books were "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy" (qtd. In Heins 2003). Unlike many similar school censorship incidents, this one ended up at the Supreme Court, largely thanks to a student named Steven Pico who took the school district to court.

The Supreme Court eventually issued what we call a compromise decision. On the one hand, it said school boards have broad discretion to select or remove books that they consider "pervasively vulgar" (qtd. In Heins 2003). But on the other hand, a narrow majority of five justices said that some motivations for the removal of books from school libraries would violate the First Amendment. Four justices joined an opinion explaining that school boards may not act in a narrowly partisan or political manner," because "our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas" (qtd. In Heins 2003). This Pico standard still governs in school censorship cases; as a result, most school boards have learned to frame their censorship decisions in terms of "vulgarity" rather than suppression of particular ideas.

Surviving an upbringing in a world of racism, brutality, and censorship, Thomas can still write, "My world is really loving, despite promises that never come to be" (qtd. On http://www.peacehost.com2000).

Racism in Literature

The onset of the 1970s and 1980s propagated a generation of historians and other academics schooled in the struggles for civil rights in the turbulent 1960s and influenced by the creative expression of their communities (Sanchez Korrol 2000). Intent on expanding the boundaries of academic history to include strong national connections, labor, gender, and ethno-racial perspectives, intergenerational dynamics, interdisciplinary methods, and new categories of analysis, they challenged the demeaning, distorted, and monolithic interpretations of the U.S. Latino experience.

Scholars mined the sources documenting the origins and evolutions of Latino communities, unlocking a wide range of materials to new interpretations, sometimes building upon -- more often contesting -- the intellectual cornerstones of borderlands, frontier, and area studies. Their generation questioned Anglo American hegemony over historical interpretation and their domination of the historical research agenda (Sanchez Korrol 2000). Not satisfied with merely creating "knowledge for the sake of knowledge," their goals ranged from charting innovative courses and methods that served to "set the record straight," to reconstructing social histories important in and of themselves (Sanchez Korrol 15).

The academic generation of the seventies and eighties sought to reconstruct nineteenth- and twentieth-century diaspora communities in all of their ethno-racial, class, and gendered complexities. Incorporating popular culture and written and oral traditions, these academics redefined the parameters of the new social history and, in the process, empowered Latino communities. The result was a historical interpretation that conferred agency on U.S. Latinos, bringing them out of the shadows and on to center stage where their reality contrasted and contested the dominant Anglo experience and where they interacted within and across class lines and ethno-racial barriers, with counterparts across state lines, oceans, and/or national boundaries (Sanchez Korrol 2000). The outcome was both U.S. And Latin America drawing strengths from components of both. This harvest of knowledge has proceeded at an impressive pace, yet the corpus of this literature remains peripheral to the core of U.S. history.

Much of the groundbreaking scholarship emanates from academic niches in American, Latin American, cultural, or Hispanic-oriented ethnic studies, or from the earliest departments and programs in Mexican-American, Chicano, or Puerto Rican Studies. One need only peruse the bibliographic publications on Latinos/Hispanos -- Albert Camarillo's Latinos in the United States is a case in point -- to appreciate the scope of the new knowledge (Sanchez Korrol 2000).

A ics range from exploration and settlement of northern New Spain to the work of women in industry, commercial agriculture, as union organizers and as transmitters of culture; from employment and labor history to the politics of language; and from the migration / immigration experience to the forging of diverse communities incorporating grass-roots leadership and institutional structures.

Examples abound of the seminal work produced by this generation, including the frontier studies of David Weber; the intergenerational focus of Mario T. Garcia's study on Mexican-American leadership; Ram n Gutierrez's interdisciplinary analysis of power and sexuality in New Mexico; the family and community studies of Richard Griswold del Castillo and Albert Camarillo; Chicana culture, consciousness, and interrelationship with the non-Hispanic societies by Vicki Ruiz and Sarah Deutsch; studies on race, ethnicity, and identity by Clara E. Rodr'guez and Juan Flores; nineteenth-century Cuban community studies of Gerald E. Poyo; the Puerto Rican community by Virginia Sanchez Korrol; the migration / immigration studies of Alejandro Portes and of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos; and bilingualism and public education studies of Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr. (Sanchez Korrol 2000).

Until now, however, historical production has tended to promote primarily the very necessary foundational reconstruction of Latino experiences, viewed predominantly from a North American perspective. In searching for elements of latinidad, scholars have tended to explore contemporary U.S. communities excluding the broader Latin American / Caribbean context and neglecting to address Hispanic diversity. Like stepping-stones to the past, the collective body of literature encompasses the groundwork for a comprehensive narrative.

Current research trends on Latino historiography and literature in the 1990s mark a move toward the premise that Spanish American history legitimately belongs to the Americas -- that the concept of borderlands transcends imaginary geo-political or academic boundaries. It argues that the history of Latinos forms an indivisible chapter subject to its own universality and specificity, and integral to our understanding of both U.S. And Latin American history (Sanchez Korrol 2000).

To speak then in terms of a collective Latino/Hispanic history that posits an integrated consciousness within the broader framework of United States history invites students and scholars alike to conceptualize an area of study in formation. It incorporates multilingual, multicultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives, ethno-racial realities, and analytical categories based on migration experience, labor, social class, gender, and identity (Sanchez Korrol 2000). As it seeks to reproduce the past in terms of a Hispanic ethnic and national diversity, it urgently challenges us to search for common ground among groups whose historical entry into what is presently the United States occurred at different times and was conditioned by different circumstances.

Admittedly, the nomenclatures we ascribe to this body of knowledge are paradoxical, imprecise, and politically laden. The terms Latino, Latina, Hispanic, Hispanic-American, Spanish American, or Ibero-Americano seek to embrace the totality of the U.S. experience regardless of class, color, regional variations, national antecedents, gender, or generational differences.

Scholar Edna Acosta Belen believes the "shorthand label (Hispanic) is turning into a symbol of cultural affirmation and identity in an alienating society that traditionally has been hostile and prejudicial to cultural and racial differences, and unresponsive to the socioeconomic and educational needs of a large segment of the Hispanic population" (Sanchez Korrol 19).

Others, however, argue overwhelmingly on the side of difference, citing centuries of regional disconnection and discontinuity among U.S. Latinos, and point to the absence of a common history as a case in point. Still others probe intra-group and generational dimensions challenging static notions of cultural adaptation, contextual dualities, and hence the formation of identity. Referring specifically to cultural evolution among Mexican-Americans, who comprise well over a half of the total Latino population, historian George J. Sanchez cautions that a bipolaric model stressing, "either cultural continuity or gradual acculturation has short-circuited a full exploration of the complex process of cultural adaptation" (Sanchez Korrol 20).

Such arguments cannot be ignored, yet in spite of the contradictions, the tide appears to turn increasingly toward endorsement of an overarching Latino/Hispanic ideal. Each group rightfully stakes a nonnegotiable claim to its own past, linguistic variations, creative expression, and overall uniqueness within the broader ethno-racial contours of this nation, but each also proudly appropriates a common historical legacy, shared language, and cultural elements, customs, attitudes, and traditions.

How historians frame the conversation on Latino history is vital. If the danger of assuming affinity within and across this enormously complex population lies in over-generalization, a blurring of distinctions and total homogenization of the groups, the challenge to historians becomes how best to incorporate and balance the nuances and variegated experiences of all Latinos, particularly of those who figured centrally in the historical enterprise in any given period, without misappropriation, distortion, or omission.

According to historian Gerald E. Poyo, grounds indeed exist for collective identity, which he describes as an "evolving phenomenon that by definition thrives on the commonalities within the diverse Latin American background groups" (Sanchez Korrol 21). If identity is understood as a continuum of shared experience, then a comprehensive narrative is surely possible. What has been lacking until now is the development of popular consciousness about an integrated past.

Overcoming Racism in Education Through Literature

In an autobiographical sketch written in 1986, the respected Chicano American novelist Rudolfo Anaya observed that "if I am to be a writer, it is the ancestral voices of...[my]... people who will form a part of my quest, my search" (qtd. In Suarez 1999).

Ancestral voices are very much a part of Hispanic-American literature today, a tradition harking back more than three centuries that has witnessed a dramatic renascence in the past generation. As the Hispanic experience in the United States continues to confront issues of identity, assimilation, cultural heritage and artistic expression, the works of Hispanic-American writers are read with a great deal of interest and passion.

In a sense, the literature functions as a mirror, a reflection of the way Hispanic-Americans are viewed by the mainstream culture - but not always the majority (Suarez 1999). Readers and critics alike tend to celebrate this literature. It is rich, diverse, constantly growing, blending the history that infuses it with an impassioned feeling of contemporaneity.

In essence, the boom in the literature today is being forged in English, by people who live and work in the United States - not in Spanish, as was the case with writers of generations and centuries past (Suarez 1999). This is a key difference, and a point of departure.

True, there are still some very real issues and problems facing Hispanic-American writers in terms of finding outlets and venues for their work, as there are for other multicultural artists and, to be sure, writers in general. Although major publishing houses are issuing more work each year, most of the interesting and engaging literature comes from small, independent presses that rely upon U.S. Government, private and university grants for stability (Suarez 1999).

Literary journals and reviews always have been an outlet for Hispanic-American voices, and some of the best work is coming from such sources. Increasingly, though, with the recognition associated with the nation's most prestigious literary awards - the Before Columbus Foundation Award, the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize - Hispanic-American authors are being courted by the publishing establishment (Suarez 1999).

Much of the attention of recent times, justifiably, is owed to the groundbreaking work of the Chicano Arts movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the emergence of Hispanic-American poets such as Rodolfo Gonzales and Luis Alberto Urista ("Alurista,") and other writers who chronicled the social and political history of the movement (Suarez 1999). The campaign was propelled by grassroots activists such as Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who played key roles in the unionization of migrant workers achieved through huelgas (strikes and boycotts).

As invariably has happened throughout history, paralleling political issues in one country or another, the plight of the migrant workers and their struggle for recognition were directly reflected in the arts. A prime example was the work of Luis Valdez and Teatro Campesino, his theater troupe, which played a pivotal role in creating solidarity and new social consciousness (Suarez 1999). During the strikes, Teatro Campesino performed from the back of flatbed trucks using striking migrant workers as performers - theater for the people and by the people. One of his plays, Zoot Suit, went from rudimentary stagings to workshops to successful productions in Los Angeles and New York, eventually becoming a film (Suarez 1999).

In referring to Hispanic-American literature, definitions are important. In this context, we are speaking about the literature written in English, and which mainly concerns itself with life in the United States (Suarez 1999). An early classic of this type is exemplified by the publication in 1959 of Jose Antonio Villareal's Pocho, a novel about a youth whose parents migrate to the United States from Mexico, in Depression-era America, to better their lives.

Hispanic-American literature contains, within its tent, writings from different countries and cultures. Villareal represents one of the major Hispanic groups to contribute - Mexican-Americans. (A word of definition is in order. Mexican-Americans are distinguished from Chicanos in that the former feel more of a national identity with Mexico; Chicanos, on the other hand, are more culturally allied with the United States and particularly with Native Americans.) (Suarez).

To a great extent, their literary tradition owes a debt to the corridos, the popular ballads of the mid-19th century that recounted heroic exploits. These corridos were also precursors to Chicano poetry of the 20th century, laying the foundation for a poetics that fuses the oral and the written, music and word. In the corrido we begin to see the mixing of the Spanish with the English, thus creating a new language with which to express a new reality (Suarez 1999).

Today, Chicano American writers have made an impression with such classic works as Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street (1985), Denise Chavez's The Last of the Menu Girls (1986), Tomas Rivera's And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1987), and the poetry of Jimmy Santiago Baca, Loma Dee Cervantes and Leroy V. Quintana. They represent the heartbeat of the Chicano American community - the living, breathing record of these people in the United States (Suarez 1999).

Puerto Ricans are the next largest contributors to the canon of Hispanic-American literature with works such as Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Line of the Sun (1989), Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets (1967), Ed Vega's Casualty Report (1991), and the poetry of Victor Hernandez Cruz, Miguel Algarin and Sandra Maria Estevez (Suarez 1999). They reflect the rhythms of their island that have been transported to New York City, San Francisco and other U.S. urban centers.

The next largest group to be represented are the Cuban Americans, making recent additions to bookshelves and college syllabi with works such as Roberto G. Fernandez's Raining Backwards (1988), Elias Miguel Munoz's The Greatest Performance (1991), Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban (1992), Oscar Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), along with the poetry of Gustavo Perez Firmat, Ricardo Pau-Llosa and Carolina Hospital. Their literary motivation, for the most part, is rooted in the reality of exile (Suarez 1999).

Students of Hispanic-American literature and casual readers alike can gain fresh insights into the diversity of this literature through a number of anthologies. These collections gather both the established and emerging voices from among the main Hispanic-American groups in the United States, as well as new voices emerging from the Dominican, Colombian and Guatemalan communities, currently represented by the work of Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and other novels, and books such as Jaime Manrique's Twilight at the Equator (1997), Francisco Goldman's The Long Night of the White Chickens (1992), and Junot Diaz's Drown (1996) (Suarez 1999). Each of these writers is bringing along a piece of a homeland that most likely is unfamiliar to the general readership.

With this impressive diversity of voices goes a caveat. Teachers, editors and readers more than ever have to be sensitive to issues of factionalism along national lines, which is only natural, since the grouping of these distinct and separate cultures under one term, Hispanic-American, can seem forced. Yet one can argue that bringing all these cultures together under the one term may be comparable to the tension of sharing a meal with distant relatives - there is a separate history and experience, yet there exists a bond of recognition, a family camaraderie.

The central point of unity among Hispanic-American writers is language. While they may speak with different accents and use different expressions, they all share the experience of bilingualism. The ability to communicate in two languages, and more important, to think and feel in two languages, at times brings with it the phenomenon of being unable to express oneself fully in only one. Linguists term this "interference," and generally view it as a negative trait, or shortcoming (Suarez 1999).

Still, Hispanic-American writers and readers of Hispanic-American literature assert that the intermingling of the two languages is an effective means of communicating what otherwise could not be expressed. Thus, many Hispanic-American writers use Spanish in their work because it is an integral part of their experience.

Indeed, many Hispanic-American authors believe that in the lives of their characters Spanish is not a "foreign" language, but rather a vital part of everyday speech and as such should not be emphasized with the use of italics. They emphasize the importance of Spanish by doing this. So many of the writers express themselves in English - the language of the mainstream (whatever that may mean) - but are resisting the destruction of their culture and thus preserve their identity by using Hispanic-American expressions, points of reference and experiences (Suarez 1999).

Hopefully this will become accepted not as "exotic," but rather part of the redefined mainstream in the arts. Again, this is a clear distinction between Hispanic-American literature and Latin American literature, which exists solely in Spanish and in translation in the United States, written by writers who do not live and work in this country.

A second facet that all Hispanic-American cultures share is the need for cultural survival. This is a controversial issue among Hispanic-Americans, especially writers of literature, since it deals with the question of assimilation (Suarez 1999). How much of their culture should Hispanic-Americans be willing to lose or suppress in order to participate in mainstream society?

The answers to this important question vary, yet it is an issue that all Hispanic-American writers tackle either directly or in more subtle ways. There are worlds of difference, for instance, between a novel like Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, and Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street (Suarez 1999). Bless Me, Ultima has at its core a timeless bond with the earth and nature, and an aura reflecting a traditional spiritual heritage. Cisneros' story cycle is more urban and pragmatic, and contemporary and assimilated in its stance on gender. But that's the beauty of so many voices adding to the canon.

The differences, which can be significant, at times may not be obvious to a general readership in the United States and elsewhere. We have touched upon the rural peasant or campesino tradition, the strong ties to the land, with which the writings of Mexican-Americans are interwoven. Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban Americans, being islanders, have strong ties to water, reflected in the writings of the poets from those heritages, such as Firmat and Cofer (Suarez 1999).

Urban life in the United States has given rise to a new tradition in Hispanic-American literature, that of the barrio, the inner city. While for Mexican-Americans the barrio is likely to be in California, the southwestern U.S. Or Chicago, for the Puerto Rican the barrio is in New York City, evident chiefly in the work of Thomas and Vega. Cuban Americans are preoccupied with the dilemmas and frustrations of political exile (Suarez 1999). Their characters often feel a yearning and sense of loss for a homeland to which they cannot return. This is most obvious in nostalgic literature set in the idyllic Cuba of the past, as well as those speculating on the Cuba of the future, as in the novels of Roberto G. Fernandez and Cristina Garcia.

To a degree, the differences in religion enter the literature, from the Catholicism unique to various Latin American countries to the African santeria influence in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Chicana American novelist Ana Castillo, in So Far From God (1993), presents a Catholic perspective that does not lose sight of the indigenous Indian belief system (Suarez 1999). By the same token, Cuban American poets Adrian Castro and Sandra Castillo work santeria into their poetry.

As we have seen, the Hispanic-American experience has many points of divergence from that of the mainstream, so it follows that the literature does too. However, there are common experiences that we all share as human beings, experiences that transcend cultures and find expression in art, making it universal and timeless. Coming of age, traditional family relationships, assimilation and the pursuit of the American dream are among the themes explored again and again. With the particular perspective Hispanic-American writers bring to their work, it has a unique quality that, today, more and more, is finding an appreciative readership in the United States (Suarez 1999).

Race Relations in Current Literature

For students at the East Harlem School in New York, race relations aren't simply an interesting topic to toss around in a social-studies discussion. They are a force that shapes lives and determines possibilities (Coeyman 2002).

That's why eighth-graders in humanities classes are eager to share thoughts stirred by a series of books that delve into questions of race. Najee Bryant, reading Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas states, "This book made me want to be the opposite of a racist" (qtd. In Coeyman 2002). Getting students to assess literature in terms of race relations is no problem, says one teacher, with a bit of a wry smile. "Sometimes I have to tell them to talk about something else" (qtd. In Coeyman 2002).