Every Child is Born A Poet

The Life and Work of Author Piri Thomas

An incendiary mix of documentary, poetry, storytelling, drama, and performance, Every Child is Born A Poet explores the life and work of Piri Thomas (b. 1928) the Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican author of the classic autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets (1967). The film traces Thomas' path from childhood to manhood in New York City's Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, from the 1930s through the 1960s; his parents' immigrant experience, home life during the Great Depression, his membership in barrio youth gangs, his struggle to come to terms with his mixed-racial identity, his travels as a teen-age merchant marine, his heroin addiction, his notorious armed robbery of a Greenwich Village nightclub, his six years spent in prison, and then his emergence as a writer.

Thomas' coming-of-age story is counter-pointed with verite scenes of his on-going work of forty-five years as an educator and activist empowering marginalized and incarcerated youths. A stylized, genre-spanning production, Every Child is Born A Poet is a riveting portrait of a life lived through struggle, self-discovery, and transformation as it examines Thomas' use of creative expression as a means of confronting poverty, racism, violence and isolation.