This book "Down These Mean Streets" is a classic confessional autobiography. This book was first
            
             published in 1967. It was written by Piri Thomas, he was a man of African descent living in Spanish
            
             Harlem. It relates how he was lost even within his own family and his identity through drugs, street
            
             fighting, and armed robbery, nearly becoming yet another statistic by the age of twenty two.
            
             In this book it tells all about the persons life. It tells how he has suffered through his life time,
            
             and what he has been through. He has been through alot, he has gone from his hometown in Harlem to
            
             Suburbia, Down South, Prison and the New York Town.
            
             It all started out being a child and he had done a few things that made his father hit him. He has
            
             been saying that "Poppa wont hit me again". He lived in a town called Harlem. He was down by Park
            
             Avenue and Harlem Park Avenue, it was a scary place. Especially the dirty stone trestle of the New
            
             York Central that was right down the middle of the avenue making long, sloomy tunnels at each street
            
             corner. He feared "death". The reason he feared death was when he once had a bully that lived by the
            
             gutter who was more dangerous than they knew him to be. His name was Dopey, he was a kid that
            
             always was drooling at his mouth. One day someone had told him to drink dirty street water and that set
            
             him off to the City Hospital. Then the next time they saw Dopey was when he was changed, he did not
            
             look droopy at all, he looked like an ordinary person except dead.
            
             They traveled alot they were at on 114th street where all Puerto Ricans lived, then to 104th
            
             street between Lex and Park Avenue. He lived in apartment 109. He went to a school named Patrick
            
             Henry. Strange eyes followed him going to that school, it was a man known as Waneko. This man
            
             Waneko was more like a gangster, he had border lines on blocks whic...