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“One person’s loud is another person’s expression of joy,” Xochitl Gonzalez wrote in 2022. “As my grandmother used to say, ‘I’m not yelling, this is just how I tawk!’”⁠
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“New York in the summer is a noisy place, especially if you don’t have money. The rich run off to the Hamptons or Maine … But for the broke—the have-littles and have-nots—summer means an open window, through which the clatter of the city becomes the soundtrack to life: motorcycles revving, buses braking, couples squabbling, children summoning one another out to play, and music. Ceaseless music,” Gonzalez writes. “I remember, the summer before I left for college, lying close to my bedroom box fan, taking it all in. Thanks to a partial scholarship (and a ton of loans), I was on my way to an Ivy League college … I didn’t yet know that you don’t live on an Ivy League campus. You reside on one. Living is loud and messy, but residing? Residing is quiet business.”⁠
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At college, Gonzalez and her fellow minority students were admonished to quiet down. “In those moments, I felt hot with shame and anger, yet unable to articulate why. It took me years to understand that, in demanding my friends and I quiet down, these students were implying that their comfort superseded our joy,” Gonzalez continues. “And in acquiescing, I accepted that.”