According to Regina Bernard-Carreño, “Piri’s Puerto-Ricanness brought him success and enough of an insider perspective to have his book banned by the New York City Board of Education during the 1960s. Due to its explicit depiction of homosexual and heterosexual acts between and among people of color, who are impoverished and live in a ‘ghetto’ full of drugs and other downfalls, Down These Mean Streets was yanked from junior high school libraries in 1971.” While for modern eyes, Down These Mean Streets provides a raw account of life in El Barrio, at the time of its first publication in the late 1960s, the subject matter of homosexual sex acts and sexual interaction between races was taboo. Bernard-Carreño later explains that Thomas’ book has since been “used as a major ‘classic’ in courses of anthropology and sociology and excerpted in English literature courses as well” and that Thomas’ writing style categorised Puerto Ricans “through a literary and non-traditional academic lens” which was, perhaps, too contemporary for its time of initial publication.
