Por Estas Calles Bravas

So we're reading a book in Spanish called Por Estas Calles Bravas by Piri Thomas. That translates roughly into "Down These Wild Streets," and it's the story of a Puerto Rican boy who grows up in Spanish Harlem around World War II. The book is a sort of autobiography of Piri Thomas, up to the time he is maybe twenty years old, and the culture clashes between Piri and those around him are strong and often violent. It's a pretty difficult read for someone who's not a Spanish speaker, mostly because there's a lot of Puerto Rican slang that we don't learn in a regular classroom. Piri sleeps with a lot of prostitutes, uses a lot of drugs whose names I probably wouldn't even recognize in English, and (spoiler alert) ends up in jail for a significant portion of the novel. But the novel also has a huge motif of racism.

Piri's whole family is Puerto Rican, but his mother and younger siblings are lighter colored whereas he and his father have darker skin and are often mistaken for African Americans. Piri finds it significantly easier to get along with African Americans than with Caucasians, but he is also resentful of black people. He is well aware of his cultures, of the stories his mother has always told about "Portorico," of the Spanish slang that is so incorporated into his lifestyle, and he sees it as offensive that he is treated as an African American, a race that the Caucasians on this side of the world held captive for centuries. He sees how easy it is for his white friends to get a job and how he is blown of at a job interview with the same credentials for the same job. He resents the whites for thinking they are better, and he resents the blacks for receiving poor treatment and thereby getting him bad treatment as well. But Piri has never lived in Puerto Rico and he is resentful of his own race too, asking his mother near the beginning how, if she was so happy in good old Puerto Rico, she could stand to move to the US where his father could never keep a job and there was no strong community, and never go back to the land she loved so much. He sees himself as a victim of circumstance, and even when he lets his emotions take control and knocks people out or gets arrested for robbery, Piri does not come to the realization that he has any control of his own fate. This is a trait he gets from his father, who cannot keep a job even during the war when jobs are easier to come by, but blames his circumstances on the depression, the WPA, his appearance, his crammed apartment, the expenses of running his family, and never takes responsibility for this.

Por Estas Calles Bravas brings up the point of reverse racism, something that it can do without being offensive, firstly because it is an autobiography and secondly because any reader who is easily offended would stop after a page, noting the frequent incidences of swearing, abuse, prostitution, gangs, drugs, violence, alcohol, theft, vulgar imagery, or... I don't know, can you think of anything else that is bound to offend people? Thomas as the author brings up reverse racism, though, because he is looking back at his past self and realizing how much of his circumstance was his fault and how much really was the fault of those around him. Piri is to a certain extent a victim of circumstances--his father is abusive and he grows up in a part of town where gangs are commonplace, and he does not really have anywhere to turn to solve his problems. White people really do hire other white people much more frequently in the places he goes to live, and the racism that the whole country has against African Americans at that time is huge in his quality of life. On the other hand, Piri does have the opportunity to take some control of his life, but by the time he comes to this realization he has such strong racial biases against everyone around him that the fight is made exponentially more difficult for him. White and black people treat him poorly throughout his childhood, and the racism he experiences at such a young age affects him tremendously in his youth, and every event just increases his disgust with one race or another.

Reverse racism is a touchy subject because if a white person accuses someone of another color of being racist, it just makes the white person seem worse, but Piri's hate for all races including his own in the book has really brought me to another level of understanding about the culture of many immigrant families or of gang members throughout the US and how our subtle racism can have such a strong effect on their lives.