Down These Mean Streets

Throughout his memoir, Piri makes a distinction between the interior life of a person—the “inside”—and the exterior, social forces of the world–the “outside.” Piri is searching for a kind of equilibrium between the inside and outside, wherein the concerns of the “outside” match up symmetrically with the conceptions of the “inside.” This “balance” is epitomized in the person of his mother: “even if she’s some kinda paddy, she’s got some kinda balance inside. Maybe Poppa turned her inside when he made me take hold inside her belly” (135). Here, Piri is saying that she has the same type of affection for her loved ones that he thinks is typical of black people—what Gerald calls the “warmth and harmony of the southern Negro” (170). In this way, she is white “outside” but black “inside.”

His siblings, so Piri believes, share their mother’s balance, a balance he and his father lack. His siblings are “like houses—painted white outside, and blacker’n a mother inside. An’ I’m close to being like Poppa—trying to be white on both sides” (145). Piri criticizes his father, and indirectly himself, for this imbalance: “Goddammit, can’t he see that the whole white world don’t care what he feels like inside? Poppa, they don’t care how you feel inside. They don’t care if you look white” (150).

If the world doesn’t see you the way that you see you, then you are inauthentic. A large part of the memoir is devoted to Piri’s struggle with finding a race that he can identify with, thereby finding his authentic racial identity. But, even if he knows that his skin and features are predominantly black, nevertheless more is required: “I’m trying to be a Negro, a colored man, a black man, ‘cause that’s what I am. But I gotta accept it myself, from inside” (124). Looking black and feeling black inside is not, however, like the balance he regards so highly in his mother. Perhaps, in the end, Piri’s balance comes from still looking somewhat white outside and feeling somewhat white inside.

When Piri goes to prison, the terms “inside” and “outside” suddenly take on new meanings.“Inside” means prison life and “outside” means life in the free world. “Inside” is no longer the true self. Instead, it is falseness. “Outside” is no longer superficial appearance but now the truth: “Outside is real; inside is a lie. Outside is one kind of life, inside is another” (263). The “outside” world of wider society is now given positive value, while the solitary “inside” world of prison is given negative value. Prison life has the ability to change the way Piri feels. Towards the end of his stay, Piri worries he may go “mad”: “Outside I became blank and hard and silent; inside I was like a hand grenade waiting for someone to pull the pin” (279).

Though he is thus balanced between a contrasting “inside” and “outside,” the balance is fraught with the potentiality of destruction. When the “outside” appearances are inauthentic to the truths of the “inside,” then there is a potential for danger. While in prison, Piri yearns for the “outside” of free life and despises the “lie” of “inside” prison life. Yet, the truth of the interiority of his “inside” affective life contrasts with the façade of his “outside” appearance. While in prison, then, the words “inside” and “outside” each take on both positive and negative connotations. This adds an extra danger and uncertainty to Piri’s description of his prison life: “outside” and “inside” are simultaneously good and bad and are always at odds with one another.