An incendiary mix of documentary, poetry, storytelling, and performance, EVERY CHILD IS BORN A POET expores 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 to manhood in New York Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, during the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s: his parents' immigrant experience, his 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 merchant marine, his heroin addiction, his notoirous armed robbery of a Grennwich Village nightclub, his six years spent in prison, his emergence as a writer, and his ongoing work of forty-five years as an educator and activist empowering marginalized and incarcerated youths and adults.