Down These Mean Streets (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Juan Pedro Tomas
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: The 1940’s and 1950’s
- Setting: Primarily New York City and New York’s Comstock State Prison
- Principal Characters: Piri Thomas, Momma, Poppa, Trina, Brew
- Genres: Nonfiction, Bildungsroman
- Subjects: Discrimination, Culture, Racism, Prejudices or antipathies, Drugs, Identity, Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricans, Sociology
- Locales: New York, NY
The Novel
Down These Mean Streets is an autobiographical novel that tells of the author’s experiences growing up as a dark-skinned Puerto Rican in New York, becoming involved in drugs and crime, and going to prison. It is only fiction insofar as the author attempts to reconstruct the scenes of his youth in a more detailed and lifelike manner than would be possible by recounting memories alone.
The book’s thirty-five chapters are divided into eight sections, with each of the sections devoted to an important place and time in the author’s life. The first...
[The entire page is 2180 words long]
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