To endure an unpleasant situation or to face an opponent, “Put cara palo on, like it dont move you” Piri says. “I am not what I am,” he might say along with Shakespeare’s Iago, another great dissembler. Piri deceives himself into believing he knows who he is because he knows at least that he is not his masks. 1 Wearing the mask imitates, even as it undermines, a stable sense of self. In his fictionalized autobiography Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas calls his mask “cara palo,” the Spanish shorthand for a face like a piece of wood, a fixed expressionless face. Paramount among them is the mask of the street master. The protagonists of the street allegories by Piri Thomas, Junot Díaz, and Yxta Maya Murray wear many masks.
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