Agafiței Andra-Elena

American Studies
MA

FREE SIDE IS THE BEST SIDE

There comes a moment in life when, all of a sudden, the “Who am I?” question springs to
mind. It may happen during childhood, which is well-known as being the time of the first
discoveries, in adolescence, when one struggles to find out as many things as possible about
oneself and the others or even when one is already a grown-up but feels that there is
something more to learn about one’s person.
So… “Who am I?” Here is the question, and the answers may vary: “I am my parents’
child”, “I am a mother/ a father”, “I am a teacher” and so on… Well, one might say, all these
can be right but do they really define one as a person? Is one satisfied with these “external”
answers? And what happens when, in one’s quest for identity, another “element” appears,
complicating the situation? Yes, it is “color” that we are talking about and, more precisely, we
are referring to “black” and “white”, the two colors that have always been and represented
different worlds (instead of “worlds”, one can also read “peoples”, “races”) that were not
supposed to blend and still… they did, giving birth to various shades.
If one is white or black, things are quite simple but when one’s color is somewhere in
between and, moreover, when this particular element tends to become the most important
factor in mediating one’s relations with the outer world, all seems to change; especially if
one’s color does not happen “to reflect”, like some sort of mirror, one’s nationality or
ethnicity.
This is also the case of John Peter Thomas – or as we all readers know him, Piri Thomas –
who, in his Down These Mean Streets novel – built as a Bildungsroman – tells the story “of a
mulatto Puerto Rican youth in search of his racial definition and cultural identity who
wanders uncomfortably in the contested social, cultural, and racial spaces of the home, the
school and the <<mean streets>>” (Augenbraum; Fernández Olmos 22). The novel portrays
“his experiences as a child in the barrio and as a teenager in an Italian section of East Harlem
and later in Babylon, Long Island” (Augenbraum; Fernández Olmos 21), which force him to
confront issues of racial and ethnic identity.
Ironically, it is in his own home where Piri first encounters loneliness, faces rejection and
seems to be invisible for the others, especially for his father, who does not even care that his
son is not in the house, being too busy playing dominoes with his friends: “Poppa hadn’t even
gone to work. He had known about my cutting out and hadn’t even worked up a sweat”
(Thomas 7). We believe that it is because of Piri’s skin color – he is the darkest of all his
siblings – that his father treats him coldly, as if he were not his son, discriminating him. Even
though he is also his kid, he is “the one that always gets the blame for everything” (Thomas
3). Thus, “color becomes the category that sets Piri apart from the others” (Augenbraum;
Fernández Olmos 23), making him feel like a total stranger among the members of his family.
Despite his age (12 years old), he is aware of the fact that the relationship between him and
his father is different, wondering if the reason might be his skin complexion:
Pops, I wondered, how come me and you is always on the outs? Is it something we don’t know about? I
wonder if it’s I done, or something I am. Why do I feel so left outta things with you – like Moms is
both of you to me, like if you and me was just an accident around here? I dig when you holler at the
other kids for doing something wrong. How come it sounds so different when you holler at me? Why

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 does it sound harder and meaner? Maybe I’m wrong, Pops. I know we all get the same food and
clothes, anything and everything – except there’s this feeling between you and me. Like it’s not the
same for me. How come when we all get to play with you, I can’t really enjoy it, like the rest? How
come when we all get hit for doing something wrong, I feel it the hardest? Maybe ’cause I’m the
biggest, huh? Or maybe it’s ’cause I’m the darkest in this family. (…) I mean, you love us all the same,
right? (Thomas 22).
Because of his father’s attitude towards him – who prefers the others who are white and acts
as if he were white – Piri’s relationship with his siblings begins to change. If, at first, he
keeps his thoughts for himself, “but how come he called Miriam <<honey>> and the rest of
those sweet names and me hardly ever? Miriam gets treated like a princess. I’d like to punch
her in her straight nose” (Thomas 22), in the end, he has a “confrontation” with his brother,
José, who rejects him the moment he chooses to identify himself as being black. On the one
hand, José states that they are Puerto Ricans and, on the other hand, the fact that he is not
black, due to his physical features, proudly defending his “white status” (Thomas 145). “I
ain’t black, damn you! Look at my hair. It’s almost blond. My eyes are blue, my nose is
straight. My motherfuckin’ lips are not like a baboon’s ass. My skin is white. White,
goddamit! White! Maybe Poppa’s a little dark, but that’s the Indian blood in him. He’s got
white blood in him and – “(Thomas 144).
As a matter of fact, we might say that it is a mere coincidence that José is white, because “the
majority of Puerto Ricans are mestizos” (Novas 132), just as Piri is.
The only one who does not seem to care about her son’s color is his mother. Paradoxically, it
is the white parent who accepts the boy as he is, paying no attention to that particular aspect.
Even though she sometimes calls him “un negrito” (Thomas 19), she does it for the simple
fact that she loves him; the word is a term of endearment and can be used “when addressing
anyone, even those with flaxen hair and blue eyes” (Novas 133).
Being a Puerto Rican with black features makes Piri feel like he does not belong in his
family, like he does not fit in. He is stuck in between the two colors, black and white and this
makes it all harder for him. Thus, it does not come a surprise for us, as readers, when we get
to read that he hates his siblings for their color and that if he is supposed to be black, then he
accepts it and wants to find out what “black” means – “Jesus, if I’m a Negro, I gotta feel it all
over” (Thomas 128) – by going South with his friend Brew, who also considers him a black:
“Ah only sees another Negro in fron’ of me” (Thomas 121).
The situation at school does not differ much from the one at home. Here too, Piri has
problems in stating his identity. At the swing session in the school gym, he asks Marcia, a
white girl, to dance but he is turned down just because she thinks he is black. At first, she
mistakes him for a Spaniard because he utters a Spanish word, “suerte” but then – even
though he mentions he is “a Puerto Rican from Harlem” (Thomas 282) – his accent, which is
“more like Jerry’s” (Thomas 282), a non-white accent, confirms her beliefs. This is a moment
in which he is not “betrayed” by his physical features but by his language. It is the linguistic
barrier that creates a gap between Piri and Marcia. Kids are mean to him and this can be
noticed from what they say behind his back: “Christ, first that Jerry bastard and now him.
We’re getting invaded by niggers” (Thomas 86). Even though someone is trying to support
him saying “I hear he’s a Puerto Rican” (Thomas 86) and that does not mean he is a Negro,
another kid says that it does not make any difference and that “he’s passing for Puerto Rican
because he can’t make it for white” (Thomas 86). Although Angel tries to comfort him, Piri
cannot help thinking that he hates all those “white motherjumps”. He hates the whites, does
not want to be thought of as a black, he just wants to be seen as what he really is: a Puerto
Rican.
In the streets, Piri’s life changes every time he moves to another place; and in each new
neighborhood, he has to state who he is, to face all the new challenges, to build up his
reputation, to do what he is required in order to be accepted in a gang because a gang is like a

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second family in which all the members look after one another, giving you the sense of
belonging, of having been integrated in a group. After all, is not this what we are all longing
for, acceptance?
Hanging around on the block is a sort of science. You have a lot to do and nothing to
do. In the winter there’s dancing, pad combing, movies, and the like. But summer is
really the kick. All the blocks are alive, like many-legged cats crawling with fleas.
People are all over the place. Stoops are occupied like bleacher sections at a game,
and beer flows like there’s nothing else to drink. The block musicians pound out gone
beats on tin cans and conga drums and bongos. And kids are playing all over the place
– on fire escapes, under cars, in alleys, back yards, hallways.
We rolled marbles along the gutter edge, trying to crack them against the enemy
marbles, betting five and ten marbles on being able to span the rolled distance
between your marbles and the other guy’s. We stretched to the limit skinny fingers
with dirty gutter water caked between them, completely oblivious to the islands of
dog filth, people filth, and street filth that lined the gutter. (Thomas 14)
The fragment above describes what we may call a no-worries-day in the barrio, in Spanish
Harlem. Still, not all days are the same, especially when you, as a Puerto Rican kid, move to
the Italian block and have to explain, all over again that you are not a black, even though all
the others say that you are “black enuff to be a nigger” (Thomas 24). In front of the white
children, Piri’s explanations do not matter at all, being still perceived as a black person and
not a Puerto Rican, and, moreover, as an intruder in their neighborhood. In the “spaghetti
country”, the rules belong to the Italians, and Piri has to fight (both on a physical and on a
spiritual level) his way in order to show them that he is not afraid, that he has got a heart, that
he is an hombre.
Wherever he goes, he lives between white people – he cannot avoid them – and this makes
him feel disoriented. Being a child born out of a white mother and an African-American
father only strengthens this awkward situation, giving him the sensation that he is “torn
apart” between his two halves: “I still can’t help feeling both paddy and a Negro. The weight
feels even on both sides even if both sides wanna feel uneven. Goddamit, I wish I would be
like one of those lizards that change colors. When I’d be with Negroes, I’d be a stone Negro
and with paddies, I’d be stone paddy” (Thomas 180). Unfortunately, he desires the impossible
and Brew reminds him that: “Yuh knows damn well yuh can’t make it like a Caucasian due to
your nappy hair – better’n mine, but still nappy. Your nose ain’t the right shape; it ain’t as flat
as mine, but it’s still flat, an’ your color can’t pass as a suntan even yuh-all had a letter of
recommendation from Sun Tan Oil Incorporated” (Thomas 181). We can notice here that
physical features play an important part in defining one’s identity, race or ethnicity.
Still, all these problems seem to be forgotten in the time spent in a maximum security prison
after having been convicted for armed robbery. In jail, Piri spends his time counting down the
days until his parole, working, thinking about Trina and his plans regarding her. It is now that
the young Puerto Rican wants “to learn all the hustles, all the arts of knowing people and
their kicks” (Thomas 257) and is “curious about everything human” (Thomas 297). He also
becomes interested in philosophy and different religions (especially the religion of Islam). He
befriends Chaplin – or Muhammad, as he likes to call himself –starts reading from the Holy
Quaran and embraces the religion of Islam. Even though he does not remain a Muslim after
his release from jail, he does not forget one thing: “No matter a man’s color or race, he has a
need of dignity and he’ll go anywhere, become anything, or do anything to get it –
anything…” (Thomas 297).
When he gets out of the jail, he is a man with self-respect and dignity, liberated from the
“Whiteness and White supremacy” (Candelario 342). Once he chooses “the Bible as a source
of content, accepting faith in Christ” (Augenbraum; Fernández Olmos 26), he is cured, he

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finds his real self, which is no longer trapped in between black and white but which now
belongs to the most important side, the free side.
Leaving behind all the aspects related to race, ethnicity or identity, “like many
autobiographical narratives, Down These Mean Streets is a didactic novel, marked by a
positive and optimistic outlook regarding a young man’s struggle for individuality, personal
responsibility, justice, human dignity, acceptance, and, above all, recognition” (Augenbraum;
Fernández Olmos 22).

Bibliography

1. Harold, Augenbraum and Margarite Fernández Olmos (eds). U. S. Latino Literature.

A Critical Guide for Students and Teachers, CT: Greenwood Press. 2000.
2. Ginetta E. B. Candelario. Color Matters: Latino/a Racial Identities and Life Chances
in Flores, Juan and Renato Rosaldo (eds). A Companion to Latino/a Studies.
Malden MA/ Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
3. Novas, Himilce. Everything You Need to Know about Latino History. New York:
Penguin Group. 2007.
4. Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Books. 1991.