Down These Mean Streets

Poverty, drugs, gangs, and racism these are things many people in small towns never seen much of for Piri Thomas, this was his childhood. In Down These Mean Streets, Piri talks about the struggle and the reality he grew up with. After reading this book, I learn that his lifestyle is very different than mine. The three main differences I noticed between my lifestyle and his were education and racism. Although education and racism were our main differences, I found there was something’s we had in common like loyalty and having heart.
Piri was born in Harlem, New York, but his parent were immigrants form Puerto Rican. Has a young boy his parent’s move the family around. With the poverty all around him, he started getting involved in gangs and …show more content…
He learned this from his father as a child and lived by it especially on the street, and even carried it with him in prison. On the streets, he would get into many fights between gangs, and even though he didn’t want to fight he never ran because it showed that he had heart. Although there was time when he was getting a beating in a fight, he kept remember what his father told about having heart. Eventually, the fight stop and he earn the boys respect by having heart and taking the beating. Further in his life when he went to prison, he told himself that even though he lost everything he never lost heart. For him in life, he states that on the streets and in prison heart leads to respect. After Piri explained how much having heart meant to him, it show me that having heart is a big part in my life. It is mostly like though not used in the same he thought of it like not backing down of a fight, but it is the same kind of concept. In my life, I feel it is important to have heart in anything you. That is why in the future I want to choose a career that I like because if I don’t like it then my heart won’t be in it, and I won’t