Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

La Máscara Afro-Puertorriqueña: Una Auto-Re-Presentación A Través De La Búsqueda De La Identidad Racial, Étnica Y Nacional En Down These Mean Streets, Forrest Blackbourn

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article analyzes the textual elements of Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets that demonstrate, in addition to the continual problematization of closed racial categories, the problems that are associated with static categorizations of ethnicity and nationality. This article calls into question traditional definitions of race, yet it also challenges definitions of Puerto Rican and Nuyorican identities. Race, nationality, and ethnicity are all vital elements to the human experience, and we will discover who is/are responsible for the protagonist Piri’s lack of racial recognition in the United States.