Piri thomas children

Piri thomas parents
Piri thomas education
Piri thomas interesting facts

•

He was one of the first second generation Puerto Rican writers of the diaspora to publish an autobiographical novel about his experiences as a black Puerto Rican, born and raised in New York’s El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) during the years of the Great Depression. His parents met in New York. His father, Juan Tomás de la Cruz (an Afro-Cuban) gave him the name of John Peter Thomas. It was his mother, Dolores Montañez (a light-skinned Puerto Rican), who gave him the nickname of Piri.

The author never fully accepted the Americanized version of his name (John Peter). As a writer, he always used the nickname assigned (Piri, from the diminutive in English, Petey) and adopted the Thomas that his father gave him on the birth certificate. At that time, schools promoted assimilation and many people with ethnic surnames, Anglicanized or changed their names.

His first novel, “Down These Mean Streets” (1967) is an autobiographical narrative of the vicissitudes of a young Puerto Rican man growing up in the harsh streets of New York during the decades prior to the civil rights movement. That this

•

Piri Thomas

Puerto Rican-Cuban poet

Pira Thomas
Born	Juan Pedro Tomas (1928-09-30)30 September 1928 New York City, New York
Died	17 October 2011(2011-10-17) (aged 83) El Cerrito, California
Genre	autobiography
Literary movement	Nuyorican
Notable works	Down These Mean Streets, Amigo Brothers

Piri Thomas (born Juan Pedro Tomas; September 30, 1928 – October 17, 2011) was an American writer and poet of Puerto Rican-Cuban descent, whose memoir Down These Mean Streets became a best-seller.

Early years

Thomas was born to a Puerto Rican mother and Cuban father. His childhood neighborhood in the Spanish Harlem section of New York City was riddled with crime and violence. According to Thomas, children were expected to be gang members at a young age, and Thomas was no exception. Thomas was also exposed to racial discrimination because of his Afro-Latino heritage.^[1] As an Afro-Latino man, Piri Thomas not only experienced racial discrimination based on his complexition within his neighborhood, but also within the ingrained c

•

Piri Thomas

(1928–2011), autobiographer, essayist, playwright, poet, filmmaker, and lecturer.

Piri Thomas was born Juan Pedro Thomás, in New York City's Spanish Harlem on 30 September 1928 of Puerto Rican and Cuban parentage. His early life was marked by involvement in violence and drugs, culminating in his arrest and imprisonment for attempted armed robbery. Thomas served seven years (1950–1956) of a five–to–fifteen year sentence. Upon his release from prison, he began working in prison and drug rehabilitation programs in New York City and has subsequently written three volumes of autobiography, a collection of short stories for adolescent readers, and a play. Latterly Thomas travelled, presenting a program entitled Unity Among Us, stressing human dignity and people's relationship to the earth.

In 1967 Thomas published Down These Mean Streets, a chronicle of his youth. In crude but forceful language, Down These Mean Streets recounts Thomas's life on the streets, his experiences with sex, drugs, and crime, and his groping toward empowerment and self–worth through the expression