“Heart” is mentioned almost incessantly in Down These Mean Streets. Though the term “heart” is always used in a positive sense, its meaning is not always consistent. Often, it means something approximating fearlessness, as is the case when, before a possible fight, Piri says to himself “Stomping time, Piri boy, go with heart” (48). Other times, it can mean something like earnestness: “if a guy gotta live, he gotta do it from the bottom of his heart; he has to want it, to feel it” (62).

When the inmates are rioting, the rioters’ hearts are synonymous with their guts: “they have heart, Piri, the fuckin’ kids got heart […] and all they’re getting for their guts are split heads and blood clots” (284).Heart can also be synonymous with instinct, and heart can be a source of empathy.

But a heart can be a source of too much empathy as well: “You had to be a lot harder to be a pusher; you couldn’t have a soft heart” (202). Heart has national and racial aspects: “we all got heart; very little of us are without heart,” Piri says about Puerto Ricans (214). And Piri’s dad is a “colored man with a paddy heart” (125).