Summary

In the Prologue, author Peralta describes the different qualities of life in New York City that he experienced as a child, specifically his life in the poverty-stricken, ethnically diverse Spanish Harlem and his private schooling on the wealthier, whiter Upper West Side of Manhattan. He describes generally being successful at keeping the two sides of his life from interacting, but then describes a day when they collided, a day when he was at school and received a phone call from his single mother telling him that the family’s apartment had just been raided by police officers looking for drugs. There were no drugs there, and the police officers apologized after having realized they made a mistake. Peralta says in his narration that his main concern was whether the police had asked for his family’s immigration papers, and that he...