The Need to Belong

Piri's need to fit in is what leads him down the wrong road. He is willing to fight for the right to a "rep" in the neighborhoods where he lives and leaves home at an early age in order to return to his friends in Harlem. Piri talks about his skin tone and his features that make him look more like a Negro than his brothers. Though he has friends who are black, Piri continues to wish he was lighter skinned so he is not constantly being called Negro. He continues to insist he is Puerto Rican. He goes on a trip to the south in what seems like a quest to find his roots.

It is his friends who first entice Piri to take hard drugs with them. Though he takes marijuana, he does not take any harder drugs because of what he has...