Down These Mean Streets is the autobiography of Piri Thomas, a Puerto Rican who grew up in El Barrio (aka Spanish Harlem), a section of Harlem that has a large Puerto Rican population. In the book, we watch Piri as he goes through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism (in both New York and the South), suffers through heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, and ends up in prison.
Down These Mean Streets has either been banned or has risked banning attempts in Salinas, CA; Teaneck, NJ; Darien, CT; District 25 in Queens, NYC, NY; and in Long Island, NYC, NY.
The book was originally published in 1967, and later republished in a special Thirtieth Anniversary Edition in 1997, with a new afterword from the author. A sequel was made, called 7 Long Times, which gives more depth to his prison years.
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