Dito Montiel’s story of his boyhood growing up in Astoria, Queens in the 1980s is a coming-of-age story packed with raw, lyrical intensity - long, hot summer nights, flirting with girls, picking fights.  The brutality of surviving adolescence in a tough urban environment is wrenching and at times devastating, but A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints leaves you with that buoyant feeling of having encountered a raw, authentic work of art that is madly, defiantly, uncontrollably alive.