[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 ...

[Seven Long Times] joins the ranks of other first person accounts of imprisonment and testifies to the inhumane and generally repressive nature of those institutions. For sociologists, Piri Thomas raises two related problems. The first is the analytical status of first person accounts. The second is the possibility of fully understanding institutions of repression within the same conceptual sphere in which these institutions understand themselves. (pp. 303-04)

In one way, the Barrio (the Puerto Rican enclave in New York) is all over ["Stories from El Barrio"]. The street argot with its mixture of English and Spanish, the tenements and their dim apartments, the local food and life styles are present in abundance. The flavor of that life is present all right. But in a more meaningful sense, the Barrio is not there at all. The eight stories that make Piri Thomas's book are anecdotes, and the Barrio is incidental to the happenings in his tales&#x...