Down These Mean Streets Chapter Summary

We don´t get a lot of information about the various characters.The story is told in first person through a narrator who’s an african american man who remains without a name throughout the novel, besides

The book goes through Jeannette’s life exposing the mistakes she, her siblings, and her parents made to become the family they were. As her life grows older, Jeannette finds herself in more responsible positions in the world, with editing school newspapers, to writing columns in a small New York newspaper outlet. Her troubles have raised the issue of stereotyping, a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Due to her status in her childhood, it was not hard for her to fit in with the other members of the poor community. “Dinitia explained that I was with her and that I was good people. The women looked at one another and shrugged.” (Walls 191) The quote talks about how members of the black community in Welch accepted Jeannette to go swimming with them in the morning hours before the white people went in the afternoon. The people who knew Dinita, Jeannette’s friend, knew that Dinita was trustworthy, and let Jeannette pass. This relates to the thesis because it shows how she was accepted amongst the people who were

This novel has many connections to The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano because they both describe the struggle to find equality for minorities and the effort that is needed to be your true self. This novel discusses the topics of Slavery and women’s rights in Charleston, North Carolina during the 1800s and while The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano takes place during 1969, they both showcase a theme of discrimination throughout. The two novels are also both about growing up in places that are outdated and in need of socioeconomic change so that minorities are free from poverty and tyranny.

The setting of a rundown house in a poor neighborhood gives the impression of their struggle to survive as African Americans. The shabbiness of the exterior suggests their low social status. “A relatively recent addition to the house and running its full width, the porch lacks congruence. It is a sturdy porch with a flat roof. One or two chairs of dubious value sit at one end where the kitchen window opens on to the porch. An old fashioned ice box stands silent guard at the opposite end” (Wilson, setting description). While the newly added porch may represent an attempt to

“Éste es un mundo brillante, éstas son mis calles, mi barrio de noche, con sus miles de luces, cientos de millones de colores mezclados con los ruidos, un sonido vibrante de carros, maldiciones, murmullos de alegría y de llantos, formando un gran concierto musical (Thomas, Down These Mean Streets, 1998, p. 3)”, is how Piri Thomas describes his birthplace, East Harlem. The diversity of cultures, the vibrant street life, the passion and conflicts of everyday life and media portrayal in movies such as West Side Story make East Harlem an exciting and mysterious place. But hidden under the dirty faces of the children is the struggle in the search for acceptance and belong,

Paul Watt and Kevin Stenson, The Street: It’s a bit dodgy around there’ safety, danger, ethnicity and young people’s uses of public spaces, chapter 15 in Geographies of youth, youth cultures: Cool places The aim of this chapter is to question young people’s feelings and experiences when moving around a town in the South East of England. The town, named Thamestown by the authors. The area in which Thamestown is location, is described as a predominantly white, wealthy middle class area of the south east of England. Between June 1994 and July 1995 Watt, Stenson and other researchers investigated, how an ethnically mixed group of young people use public spaces in terms of danger and safety. Several key points arise in this chapter. Racial segregation

The greatest problem that the society faces in the inner city black community is the interpersonal violence and aggression created by the troubled youth in their society. By simply living in this kind of violent, innocent people are affected by crimes such as burglaries, carnapping and drug related incident and shootings.

In both Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, a novella, and Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, the female characters struggle to find their place in a society monopolized by males. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is a young Mexican-American girl who wishes for her own home. In the novella, we follow Esperanza’s journey as she matures emotionally. We see the world through her eyes as she learns the true and ugly reality of her world. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha is a twenty-year-old college student whose beliefs are very different from those of her conservative family. Beneatha has big dreams of changing the world and becoming a doctor, but she too soon realizes that the world will never allow that. Throughout the play, Beneatha struggles to determine her identity as a very well-educated and outgoing African-American Woman. In both, the play and novella, Cisnero and Hansberry both

Regarding the film and associated reading, they both are related and embraces a specific way in which a person or group lives. The film directly wavers between middle-class values and street values in the way it portrays the value of hard work and ambition versus the unrest of poverty and street surviving. For example, Mookie was criticized by his boss and girlfriend for being lazy and lacking ambition. Actually, he was never given a chance by the boss' son who didn't like blacks. In the excerpt, There Are No Children Here, the children were exposed to so much unrest at a young age that most fell victim to life in the streets and therefore followed the street values that correlate with it. However, the story embraced the desire for the children in those circumstances to be rewarded with an education, a good job and to leave the poverty stricken atmosphere (Kotlowitz, 17). The theme was racial imbalance which promoted the dislike of police

In the poem “William Street” Slessor explores the poverty within the streets of Kings Cross that demonstrates the everyday struggles that people within the community go through searching for employment. This is shown through, “the dips and molls with flip and shiny glaze (death at their elbows, hunger at their heels)” uses imagery and slang to depict the criminal activity due to poverty. This creates a visual representation of the pickpockets, drunks and

The Autobiography, Down These Mean Street takes place in El Barrio, a section of Harlem that has a large population of Puerto Ricans. Piri Thomas is the son of a Puerto Rican and Cuban, and has the darkest shade of skin is his family. He constantly compares his physical features to his family’s physical features, he “ I felt my nose, shit it ain’t so flat… but mentally I measured it against my brothers, whose nose where sharp straight and placed neat-link in the middle of their fair patty faces.” He felt as if he was the outsider because

Throughout her struggle to find a balance between school and work, Moody begins to take note of the racial inequalities in her society. The black and white dichotomy was not the only form of racial distinction she internalized. The poor treatment of “high yellows”

You would find children playing in the yard, using their imagination and exploring the outdoors. When the sun goes down you will find everybody seated around the table, enjoying a nice homemade meal bound to make your mouth water. Maycomb seems like the perfect community. At least, so it seems until you see the other side of it. The blacks live in the slums of town, with the houses being in states of disrepair, dirty children running amok, and the feeling of danger floating in the air. You see poorly kept streets, and blacks give you strange looks as you walk through their side. The children are covered in filth and it is easy to wonder where their parents are. Look inside these houses and see broken families, kids who have barely anything to eat, and empty skeletons of houses that once held great grandeur. How could it be that one street in Maycomb divides two worlds, one of happiness, prosperity, and hope, and another of darkness, poverty, and despair. This line, although symbolized by a street, is purely imaginary: It does not have to be this way. However, because of the pigmentation of a person’s skin, there is either greatness, or there is defeat. It is not something that can be chosen; in fact, it is the farthest

Throughout history, the strict and rigid lines of social class have divided people. In addition, the unfortunate correlation between social class and race creates gaps that are often hard to bridge. Even when there is racial or social ambiguity, the stereotypes that society enforces are difficult to ignore or disregard. A Song in the Front Yard, A Street in Lawndale, and Recitatif share a juxtaposition of social class which is demonstrated with the suggestion of race and prejudice, which although subtle, plays a large role in the relationships and development of the characters.

The pressure of poverty makes many law-abiding citizens go against their morals by finding illegal alternative ways to make money. The code of the Streets is about how a researcher named Elijah Anderson discovers what the codes mean and what they symbolize to the minorities that reside in the inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia. He learns that there two groups of people that reside in the inner-city which are decent and street. People who are decent are well mannered, goal oriented, civil, and law-abiding citizens compared to the street people who are ill-mannered, lack education, break the law, and are self-centered. He explains how the street people view decent people as people who are “acting white” or believe to be better than the street folks