Born in Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas was a child of the Depression. His mother was a light-skinned Cuban; his father a Puerto Rican whose darker complexion Thomas alone of all the children inherited. The cruel racism that he experienced within his own...

Piri Thomas is the author of the autobiographical classic Down These Mean Streets, first published in 1967. In Down These Mean Streets, Thomas chronicles his growing-up years in Spanish Harlem, years filled with the bittersweetness of life in a close-knit Puerto Rican enclave...

[Reading] "Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand" reminds us that most of our experiences are not that interesting to others. Accordingly, the bulk of Thomas's autobiography just doesn't grab us—or even pinch us. His first book, "Down These Mean Streets,"… is a remarkable chronicle of one dark-skinned Puerto Rican's fear, rage and transcendent strength. It is a report from hell, describing with casual vividness the bleak event of his life from age 13 to ...

It is his experience behind bars—seven years for armed robbery and felonious assault—that Thomas examines in … "Seven Long Times." Thomas served his time in both Sing Sing and Great Meadows (Comstock), and his narrative account of what passes for life in these institutions may not be new…. [However Thomas] has written an intensely human document of one man's will for survival. (p. 10)

Stylistically, these storied reminiscences [in Stories from El Barrio] suffer from restraints imposed by a writer not totally at home with a juvenile audience. They also lack the breadth of vision of, say, [Nicholasa Mohr's El Bronx Remembered]…. But there's a pervasive, gut-level honesty that breaks through that thin veneer of stiffness; personalities emerge intact, and pace is fluid. The stories, whether humorous, touching, or tragic, strongly voice their settings; their concerns ...