Piri Thomas is a child of Puerto Rican immigrants living in the New York City area, primarily in Harlem. Piri has a dark complexion that makes him question whether he is black or white. Piri’s quest to come to terms with being a self-identified black man takes up a large part of his narrative. Eventually, he is able to accept that he is black and not seek to deny it, in the way his father denies being black.

Piri has trouble getting along with his father, who he feels treats him differently than he does his siblings, perhaps because Piri is so similar to his father in many ways. For a while, during his young adulthood, Piri develops a heroin addiction, which he is able to kick with the help of his friend, Waneko. When a young teen, Piri joins a gang and gets involved in fistfights and petty crime. This eventually leads to Piri committing robberies as a young adult, which leads to his being sentenced to five to fifteen years in jail. In jail, Piri learns that defending his “rep” is less important than earning his freedom from jail. When Piri is released from prison, he is tempted to go back to his old ways, but he is able to resist and looks forward to a drug-free, non-criminal life.