Because the truth is they don’t understand one another. It’s not a plan of Mary Pat’s making, nor is it her desire, that they have different tastes in music, in clothes, in food they put on their tables. But that’s the way it is just the same. They like different cars, different sports, different movies. They don’t even talk the same. The Puerto Ricans barely speak the language, but most of the blacks she knows have grown up here and still it’s like they didn’t. They speak that jive of theirs, which, truth be told, Mary Pat likes, loves the rhythm of it, loves the way they emphasize different words in a sentence than any white people she knows, have a way of punching out through the ends of their stories with big booming laughs. But it doesn’t sound anything like the speech that leaves the mouths of Mary Pat or her friends. So if you don’t speak like us, Mary Pat wants to ask, and if you don’t like our music, our clothes, our food, our ways, why come into our neighborhood?
Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 