Poet Piri Thomas

UTSA to host March 29 screening of film on poet Piri Thomas

(March 26, 2004)--The UTSA Culture and Policy Institute (CPI) will host a screening of a documentary on the life and poetry of Piri Thomas at 7 p.m., Monday, March 29 in Buena Vista Street Building Room 1.338 at the UTSA Downtown Campus. The screening is free and open to all.

The showing of the documentary "Every Child is Born a Poet" is presented as part of the CPI community issues awareness series in conjunction with John D. Vacca's community outreach work with hard-to-reach youth in San Antonio.

"Every Child is a Poet" explores the life and work of Piri Thomas, the 75-year-old Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican author of the classic autobiographical novel, "Down These Mean Streets" (1967).

The film traces Thomas' path from childhood in the 1930s to manhood in the 1960s in New York City's Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, providing looks at his parents' immigrant experience, home life during the Great Depression and membership in barrio youth gangs.

The biography also includes close-up views of his struggle to come to terms with his mixed-race identity, travels as a teenage merchant marine, heroin addiction, his notorious armed robbery of a Greenwich Village nightclub, six years in prison, his emergence as a writer and his forty-five years as an educator and activist empowering marginalized and incarcerated youths.

The film is part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign which uses media resources through PBS to further community discussion and decision-making on the issues of public health and safety.

For more information, contact Christina Montoya, Culture and Policy Institute coordinator of special programs, at 210-458-2650.

--Tim Brownlee