Down these Mean Streets by Piri Thomas

Down these Mean Streets by: Piri Thomas. Review written by: Tiffany Woodmansee
Down These Mean Streets is written by Piri Thomas. Piri Thomas was a Puerto rican Cuban mixed who was dark skinned and in the neighborhood that he grew up his skin color made him an outsider. This book is actually a memoir of all the things he went through in the Spanish Harlem, from being in a gang it a young age, to get locked up, to having freedom in the outside world.
In all I absolutely enjoyed this book because even though I don't have the same exact life as Piri I know what it feels to be an outsider and I know how it feels to feel like I'm captured and then how it feels to get free of how life used to be. I think Piri wrote this book to show that there is hope for those with troubled lives and sometimes it takes getting locked up for several years to change things for the better.
This book is an exact account of Piris life from when he was a little kid to his release from prison. In this review I will be talking about the last section of this book which I found most interesting because he proved that a person so hardcore could change they way he lived and thought about his life.
The changing of his life starts when he wakes up in a hospital with a guard by his side and a sore chest and abdomen that have been wounded by gun shots. He was told that he would get the chair because the cop that he shot was dead, but that wasn't the case because the cop didn't die and he was just going to be put in jail. He stayed at this one jail called Bellevue and there he stayed until he was sentenced. He was sentenced for 5-15 years and then 5-10 more on top of that for another charge.
He was sent to Sing Sing to do hard labor and there he worked for a short time before he got transferred to Comstock state prison where he would spend the next several years of his life. He did the same thing everyday: eat, go to school, eat, work, eat and have free time. In this prison is where he started to think about how life really was and what it could be like. He always dreamed of his girlfriend that he told to wait for him but he found out that she didn't wait and he almost blew his release because of that.
Upon his release he stated that he was a changed man and he was put on parole for three years which meant once he was out he couldn't mess up again or he would be back in there in a second. Once on the outside he started going back to his old ways, then one day when getting in from a long night he looked himself in the mirror and said he wanted to change because he didn't want to be that way any more and thats what he did. He changed for himself and lived on trying to help other troubled kids that were like him.
My favorite story is when he was released he was taken by these two men that were getting him for the warrants that were out on him. On the way of taking him they let him be free of hand cuffs, bought him lunch and dinner, let him go to the bathroom by himself twice and on the way to the tombs they took him through his old town, Spanish Harlem. Before getting released to the cop at the tombs he said, "I had been free about twelve hours". This showed him that people can be trusted and that there is a better life out there.