I really enjoyed reading this book! I believe that Piri’s life story, the experiences he lives through and his sense of always wanting to find his true identity and belonging in the world is something that many people can relate to. One of the aspects that grasped my attention throughout the book is the use of language. Street language, Spanish language, southern language, language from New York’s Puerto Rican and black populations all come together in this book and evoke a feeling of an urban and multicultural environment. Piri Thomas gives the reader a glimpse of racial and cultural groups within the United States by the illustration of various different languages, phrases and slang that are being spoken. He has an ability to present the book as a work of a language mosaic where it comes alive in every page of the book. The use of language in this book is one of the reasons that makes this book quite interesting and unique.
In the first part of the book we encounter a young Piri who is starting to feel confused with his identity and his belonging in society. We encounter him getting mistreated and bullied in places such as the Italian neighbourhood and later on in the suburbs. In the second part we encounter a Piri who wants to find answers to who he who truly is, but he is not doing it for the sake of being accepted and wanted by the others, but he is doing it for himself. He wants to go through this journey of traveling across the country and heading south in order to truly accept who he is. The readers go through Piri’s journey of finding his self. He comes to accept the black identity that has been placed on him throughout his life and understands that blackness is not something that has to be in opposition with his Puerto Rican identity. Through his search of identity and in his search for a sense of self in a society that repeatedly questions and disrespects his worth, Piri finally embraces these two identities simultaneously. Through his journey of self-realization, Piri starts to understand that it is not about trying to change how people see him, if not it is about accepting and resolving how he feels about himself. This book is still a clear representation of a country that still fails to accept the multiple identities that are found in its people and culture.
Your point about the book’s “language mosaic” (as you put it) is a good one, I think. This is a book that’s very interested in language: as a marker of identity and place, but also as something that can be creative and construct new identities, new ways of being.
Your point about the mosaic of languages is very interesting. I also loved how I could find words in Spanish, that are accurately used in specific sentences and phrases, so that the meaning and essence of them can be highlighted and be more unique. I find myself even having memorized some of the slang used by Piri, when he is talking with his friends.
With respect to how Piri tries to find himself in the second part of the book, with the purpose of doing it for himself, and not for other’s approval of him; I agree. Yet, I think that it took him almost all the book to realize that. It is not until the end that we see a different Piri.
“This book is still a clear representation of a country that still fails to accept the multiple identities that are found in its people and culture.”
I second this! I actually had a weird thought the other day when I was reading the book. I wonder what would happen if we all looked the same (regarding race), but that’s silly because it was never meant to be that way. I wonder how many deaths or hate crimes would have been prevented, how many lives not shattered because of people hating each other because of their differences..
I totally agree with you that one of the most impressive aspects of this book is the use of language. But most of all, I would say that what struck me most was the way Piri Thomas represents the different social hierarchies through his dominance of English. The fact that Piri writes words according to the sounds that come from the more or less random pronunciations of people is a way of showing that people belong to a certain social group. Moreover, one can follow how Piri Thomas evolves in this social scale through the language he used when he was young or when he wrote this book.