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Down These Mean Streets: To be or not to be

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I don’t know where to begin. On some levels I feel like I can relate to Piri but on others I can’t. I have so many thoughts on the matter and am deeply impressed by his accounts. The last time I had this sort of “gut reaction” in reading a book was when I read the Kite Runner. I have had a sheltered and happy upbringing compared to what is being portrayed in the book, so I can’t fully understand these struggles completely. Having said this, I wanted to put to paper some of the thoughts I have on the main themes of the book. As a title for this blog post, I refer to Shakespeare's Hamlet. This question "to be or not to be" holds value in all aspects of life, and in the context of this book it ties in with identity, recognition, life, death, nationhood, manhood, and many more. 

After reading the first part I went back to the prologue. I think the entirety of it can be tied into that short prologue “I’m here, and I want recognition, whatever that mudder-fuckin word means” and “I’m a skinny dark-face, curly-haired, intense Porty-Ree can – Unsatisfied, hoping, and always reaching.” I think this first part, up until the point where Piri goes South, presents us with the earlier years in his quest for identity. In experiencing humiliation and trauma, he began to set himself apart from others. First he felt discrimination towards his ‘in-group’ his family and friends. When they moved to the Italian quarter they became ‘Spics’ versus ‘Italians’. When the family moved to long island he faced racial discrimination for the first time, at least as he recalls it, and this was something he experienced alone. This defied his self-confidence, and since he wasn’t in the Barrio, there was no support/pillar to lean on while processing this new ‘discovery’. His own family was ‘white’. Being Puerto Rican made them ‘white’. In chapter 15 Piri says he’s the only one “who(‘s) found out!” and later he tells his mom he has hatred for his family’s “colour kick (…) for trying to show what’s not inside”. He hates his family for living a lie, for having let him live that lie. I think this “kick” is one of the ‘kinks’.

The way race is twisted and mixed into nationality and ethnicity is a kink. Being Puerto Rican meant being white for his family, and for Piri, at a certain point, being black meant that he wasn’t Puerto Rican (leading to his moving South).  Chapter 16 is titled Funeral for a Prodigal Son, in this chapter Piri leaves his family. He chooses to disassociate from them and their conception of life. This title in itself is a kink. The story of the prodigal son is one of return and reintegration in the family where there is a great feast held in the name of a repentant son. However, in this case, Piri comes to terms with his reality and chooses to leave, there is no feast, no repentance. There are no more childhood illusions of living by Central Park, no more dreams of being a millionaire, he needs to go South to find where he truly belongs. Maybe it is a funeral from his family’s perspective. His parents had lost a son and now they were ‘losing’ another one. And being a ‘prodigal son’ in Piri’s eyes might be related to the fact that he was once lost and now has found, what he thinks to be, the truth and his true destiny. 

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