39 pages • 1 hour read
Piri ThomasDown These Mean Streets
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 11-13: “Harlem”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “How to Be a Negro Without Really Trying”
Piri has been homeless for three months when he meets Pane and his sister, Lorry, at a bar. They offer him a place to sleep, and the sixteen-year-old Piri soon starts a sexual relationship with the thirty-three-year-old Lorry. This relationship, “all natural, all good, all as innocent and pure as anything could be in Home, Sweet Harlem,” lasts for a few months (97).Of Lorry, Piri says that he “couldn’t dig her the way she wanted me to” and he leaves her for a young single mother (97).It isn’t long before he leaves her as well, stealing ten dollars from her in the process.
Needing money, Piri looks for work and applies for a job as a door-to-door salesman. A Catholic man named Mr. Christian interviews Piri, who pretends to be a devout Catholic in order to get on Mr. Christian’s good side. Although Mr. Christian tells Piri that work will be available soon, Piri’s friend, Louie, is offered a job right away: “The difference between me and Louie was he was white” (103). When, later on in his life, Piri relates this story to a black friend, his friend’s reply is that “a Negro faces that all the time”, to which Piri responds, “I know that […] but I wasn’t a Negro then. I was still only a Puerto Rican” (104).
Chapter 12 Summary: “My Marine Tiger”
Instead of finding a job, Piri takes to selling marijuana. One day, he sees his friend, Carlito, with “the prettiest, softest, widest-eyed Puerto Rican girl in the whole world” (107). She is Carlito’s cousin, Trina, who will become the love of Piri’s life. Trina is visiting from Puerto Rico, but ends up staying in America. Piri’s nickname for her is “Marine Tiger […] after the ship that brought so many Puerto Ricans to New York” (107). Waiting for Trina with some friends, Piri yields to peer pressure and uses heroin for the first time. Piri says he felt “sort of detached,” but that it gave him a “good-o feeling” (110). At a party, Trina’s drinking upsets Piri and he tries to punch her, but misses and puts his fist through a window. Trina brings him to the hospital and there he does more heroin with a fellow patient. A few days later, some men hassle Trina at a party. They aren’t intimidated by him because he has an injured hand, but Piri tells them “I have many hands, motherfucker,” referring to his gang mates (118). The men retreat and Piri dances with Trina.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Hung Up Between Two Sticks”
In this chapter, Piri recalls conversations he had with Crutch and Brew, “two colored cats” who were his “tight amigos” (120). Crutch says that a “black man’s so important that a drop of Negro blood can make a black man out of a pink-asshole, blue-eyed white man” (120).With Brew, Piri plays a game called “dozens,” which is a “game of insults.” Piri playfully calls Brew an “ugly spook” and Brew retorts: “[d]ig this Negro callin out ‘spook’ […] Ah only sees another Negro in fron’ of me” (121).
Piri is very sensitive about the darkness of his skin and maintains that he is not black, but rather Puerto Rican. Brew insists that Piri is a Negro, but Piri, though he is coming around to Brew’s line of thought, still resists considering himself black. Brew tells him that things are much worse for Negroes down in the southern states. Piri is intrigued and wants to visit the South to see how it is. The chapter ends with Brew and Piri deciding to join the Merchant Marines as a way of going to the South.
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
In these chapters, Piri is back in Harlem and is starting to question his conception of his race. Previously, he had thought of himself as a dark-skinned Puerto Rican. Now, he starts to wonder if he is really black, like his black friends. This burgeoning racial questioning is found in Chapters 11 and 13. In between, in chapter 12, Piri experiences two other beginnings: his first serious romantic relationship and his first usage of heroin. These three chapters are filled with newly-developing possibilities. At this point, Piri could have a lover, or could remain single. He could become a heavy drug user, or he could stay clean. He could even, in a sense, stay a white Puerto Rican, or become black.
