The Thinking Man Comments

Miguel Piñero was born in Gurabo, Puerto Rico on December 9th 1946.
With his parents he arrived in New York at the age of 4 and following the desertion of his father in 1954, Manuel and his mother moved into a basement and had to live off welfare. He gained the first of what would be many criminal convictions for theft. This was at the age of eleven. He was sent to the Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx. Subsequently Piñero joined a street gang called 'The Dragons' and by the time he was 14 he was hustling in the streets. Piñero was a drug addict before he reached his 20s and had a long criminal record.

By 1972 when Piñero was 25 he was incarcerated in the notorious Sing Sing Prison. This was for armed robbery. Ir was while serving time in prison that he wrote the powerful play Short Eyes as part of a playwriting workshop for inmates. The play is based on his experiences in prison and portrays life and death among prison inmates.
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