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 9-10: “Suburbia”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Babylon for the Babylonians”
It is 1944 and a 16-year-old Piri moves with his family to Long Island. Piri doesn’t want to move to Long Island, feeling that he “belonged in Harlem” (81).His friend Crutch tells him “there were a lot of paddies out there, and they didn’t dig Negroes or Puerto Ricans” (81). Piri gets along well in Babylon (a suburb of Long Island) at first, playing baseball with his classmates. He goes to a dance and flirts with a “paddy” girl named Marcia. He thinks that the flirting went well, until he later overhears Marcia talking with her friends about the encounter. “Imagine the nerve of that black thing,” she says (85).Piri storms out of the dance and takes out his frustrations on his white friend Angelo: “I hate them. I hate you. I hate all you white mother jumps” (86). The chapter ends with Piri vowing to never go back to the school in Long Island again.
Chapter 10 Summary: “But Not for Me”
Dissatisfied with Long Island, Piri spends a lot of his time partying back in Harlem. His mother, who is in failing health and will soon die, tells him that his father is seeing another woman. Piri gets a job as a kitchen attendant at a hospital, and strikes up a friendship with a blonde girl named Betty, who also works there. Piri tells her about the Harlem barrio, and even ends up taking her to Spanish Harlem to meet his people. One night, while they are returning from Harlem, they hear someone say, “Will you look at that damn nigger with that white girl?” (90). Piri wants to attack the speaker, but Betty holds him back. Later that night, they have sex and Betty tells Piri that she loves him. Piri doesn’t reciprocate, thinking to himself “I hate you—no, not you, just your damn color. My God, why am I in the middle?” (90). He never speaks with Betty again and decides to move back to Harlem. He tells his mom, “This Long Island ain’t nuttin’ like Harlem, and with all your green trees it ain’t nuttin’ like your Puerto Rico” (91).
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
In these two chapters, Piri experiences frustrations involving white love interests. While Marcia will have nothing to do with him because of his skin color, Betty is undeterred. Nevertheless, a relationship with Betty proves impossible because he has built up such a hatred for “paddies” since he has moved to Long Island. The obstacle to having a relationship with white girls is not just the external obstacle of the fact that many of them are biased against him; it is also the internal obstacle of Piri’s own hatred towards whites for the way many whites treat him.
