Down These Mean Streets Part 1

Dear Group,

In the first section of the book "Down These Mean Streets", we are given the first part of the autobiography of Piri Thomas. It focuses on his early teenager years and the troubles he went through growing up in the Spanish part of Harlem known as El Barrio. He gets involved in drugs and runs away from his parents numerous times. When this happens, he moves in with his friends sometimes or maybe even his relatives until he can tell they are growing tired of him. With no house, he goes out and looks for a job, but it almost always ends with him selling drugs and even using some to get through.

A number of questions have popped up in my mind when I have been reading this book, especially because of the way it is written. Alot of the language is a little bit slang and if you don't know what it means, it can definitely be confusing as to what the sentence means. I also didn't know that people talked like that back then. It seems that kind of language is making a come back. Unless he changed the writing to make it seem more understandable for people nowadays, but a lot of the language is similar to what it is now today.

I have been annotating on post it notes to keep track of what I think will be important possibly later. Piri has met a lot of people, some helpful and some not so helpful. Piri himself is helpful. One example is how he often gives money to homeless people, but he is also not oblivious to the world. He knows that money will probably be used on drugs and realizes it doesn't affect him, so why should he care? It is just him being helpful to someone else and they can do what they want with their lives. Overall, this book has been great and I look forward to reading some more.