Clap When You Land - Review
Clap When You Land tells its story from the perspective of two sisters—Camino and Yahaira Rios. Camino, a studious girl who wants more than anything to get off her island and move to New York with her father so she can attend Columbia University. Losing her mother when she was young, she and her healer aunt have only her father’s income to sustain them—and the local pimp who follows Camino knows it. Across the ocean, her sister Yahaira lives a more lax life—skating by in her classes, painting her nails and keeping up with the latest fashions, and spending time with her neighbor and girlfriend Dre. When their father goes to visit Camino shortly after the events of 9/11 on Flight 587 from New York to the Dominican Republic, his plane crashes into the ocean after takeoff. In the loss that follows and the planning of his funeral, family secrets begin to unravel and lead the two sisters to discover each other across the ocean. A beautiful and heartbreaking story about the lives our parents lived before us and the meaning of family, Clap When You Land is a can’t miss read.
Elizabeth Acevedo makes me feel each line with every bone in my body and sends chills down my spine when she reads. Known best for her book The Poet X, she has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Telling her stories with with poetic precision of emotion and place, her novels transport you into a reality with stakes and people that immediately matter to you. As a performing poet, she reads the part of Yahaira in the audiobook with a flex of confidence and assurance many of us can only imagine within our own thoughts. Coming from an Afro-Dominican American background herself, this story shows the complexities of colorism, class, and culture as it pertains to both sisters and their homelands and acts as an important reminder that Hispanic and Latino do not mean one color or one ancestry. After reading Clap When You Land, I am sure of my love of Acevedo’s writing and voice and can’t wait to read her other novels Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths and With the Fire on High and be transported yet again.
