Piri Thomas

The author recalls his early experiences with poverty and discrimination, his involvement with drugs and gangs, and his prison sentence for armed robbery which led to his rehabilitation and work with street gangs and drug addicts

Down These Mean Streets

Stories from El Barrio

Amigo Brothers

Seven Long Times is the prison memoir of one of America's greatest, most passionate chroniclers of life in dehumanizing prisons and on mean city streets. Wounded and arrested while committing an armed robbery, Thomas begins his long seven years of incarceration first in the prison ward at Bellevue and then in Sing Sing and Great Meadows (Comstock). Thomas' great heart and tough street philosophy face off lyrically with the brutality of the guards, the sterility of steel and cement, the perversity fostered on both sides of the bars by incarceration. Seven Long Times is the critically-acclaimed sequel to Thomas' classic of urban and prison literature, Down These Mean Streets.

7 Long Times

Many people write about the ghetto. Piri Thomas lived there. In this book, the author of Down These Mean Streets tells what he found when he returned from a seven year prison term. Friends dying on heroin, or getting rich selling it. Jobs he couldn’t get, not because he lacked training or ability, but because the union was open only to whites. And an indomitable aunt who brought him into her church, where he met the woman who became his wife, and where he began to take an interest in helping others. Eventually he got a job working with street children—helping them find highs other than drugs, trying to cool rivalries fueled by frustration, persuading gang leaders to surrender weapons originally intended for bloody street battles. But even with success came bitter disappointments. Pervasive discrimination forced Thomas and his family to give up a suburban home. And an appalling hypocritical and selfish boss forced him out of his job—and almost back into prison. Piri Thomas writes of these experiences with unselfish candor and compassion. He pictures the poverty and squalor as well as the spirit and vitality of the ghetto in a dramatic story that is blunt, painful, absorbing and profoundly moving.

Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand

In these eight stories Piri Thomas takes us with him into El Barrio—Puerto Rico in New York City—and recreates the scenes he knows so well from his own childhood. He leads us through streets teaming with life, up crumbling front stoops, down dark hallways, into crowded rooms, and into the hearts and minds of his people. He takes us into the ring for a hard-fought boxing match and out of the city on a Boy Scout outing. He sits us in the barber’s chair and right under the burning scalp of a kid getting his hair straightened. He puts us into a boy’s mind for a wild fantasy trip, and into the heart of a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a pretty girl. He draws vivid stories from his part experiences and makes us feel what it means to be poor and proud and generous; to be streetwise and full of bravado but frightened, too; to struggle to go straight; to be ashamed of being ashamed; to dream. Piri Thomas, who reached thousands of readers with his bestselling autobiography, Down These Mean Streets, now gives young readers a vivid slice of the life in El Barrio—a place where people face their problems with energy, ingenuity, and love. Speaking in the voice of the streets and from his heart, he captures their spirit, their laughter, and their hope.

Wounded and arrested while committing an armed robbery, Thomas begins his long seven years of incarceration first in the prison ward at Bellevue and then in Sing Sing and Great Meadows (Comstock). Thomas' great heart and tough street philosophy face off lyrically with the brutality of guards, the sterility of steel and cement, the perversity fostered on both sides of the bars by incarceration. Seven Long Times is the critically-acclaimed sequel to Thomas' classic of urban and prison literature, Down These Mean Streets.

Piri Thomas

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