leynes's Reviews > Clap When You Land

Rereading this book was the best decision of my reading year thus far, apart, maybe, from finally picking up a Toni Morrison novel. Last year, I listened to the audiobook for Clap When You Land and felt somewhat disappointed. Elizabeth Acevedo is one of my favorite writers, so a lukewarm 3 stars just didn't feel right. On my first listen, I couldn't really connect to any of the characters, and the girls' voices sounding eerily similar, so much so that I was unable to distinguish them most of the time.

When I voiced my frustration, a lot of people reached out to tell me that I definitely need to READ the book in order to properly enjoy it. And boy, ya'll were right. Reading this book was a whole 'nother experience. It was magical. I was sucked into the story. Both of the girls became incredibly precious to me. I gasped. I sobbed at the ending (literal tears streaming down my face). I devoured the book, and it has honestly become one of my new favorites of all time!

I think what stood out to me the most is that upon my reread, I focused on wholly different things. During my listen of the audiobook, I was preoccupied with keeping the two sisters apart, and was mainly focused on the plot surrounding the death of their father, and their mourning and grieving periods. And a lot of that fell flat for me. During my reread, however, I decided to focus on another thing entirely: the disparity of these two girls, one who grew up with her mother in the United States, and the other who grew up in the Dominican Republic with her aunt.

I tabbed all the passages in which life in the DR and/ versus the US was explored, and all the important issues that Clap When You Land raises. And boy, let me tell you, I tabbed a whole fucking lot. So, let's get into it!

The difference between the sisters is established from the start. The book opens with a powerful passage from the perspective of Camino:

I know too much of mud.
I know that when a street doesn’t have sidewalks
& water rises to flood the tile floors of your home,
learning mud is learning the language of survival.

As a girl from Germany, I know nothing of mud, or floods, or survival really. For Camino, though, living in the DR, that's her daily bread. In her first chapter, we meet her as she accompanies her aunt Tía, who works as a local healer, to a woman who suffers from cancer. Camino, at age 16, tends to the patient. And Acevedo invites us into Camino's thoughts and innermost wishes: to move to the US to attend medical school. She wants to become a "proper" doctor.

Every year for my birthday he asks me what I want.
Since the year my mother died, I’ve always answered: 

“To live with you. In the States.”

It is also established that she doesn't feel safe in her neighborhood, amongst the people who should be her community. We see Camino face cat-calls (and other much more severe forms of sexual harassment, as we later learn^^) on the streets. We see the reality of what it means to grow up in a female body without a father (or male guardian).

I am so accustomed to his absence
that this feels more like delay than death

Rereading Camino's opening chapter was like a sucker punch to my stomach. It made me incredibly sad. Camino's helplessness from the start was painful to witness. As a reader, I had to face my own privilege(s). I never had to face what it feels like to literally have no future in your own home country.

My reality mirrors more Yahaira's, whom we meet in the next chapter. Yahaira lives in New York. And the way we are introduced to her shows the stark contrast between these girls. We meet Yahaira at school, listening to her girlfriend talk about "climate-change protests", while she is flipping through a magazine. The irony is not lost that we've just left Camino's POV of illness, floods and hurricanes. For Yahaira, if she considers these problems at all, they are abstract, not palpable. And whilst Camino is helping her aunt care for the sick people of their neighborhood, Yahaira tells us that: "I hang out every Saturday with Dre, / watching Netflix or reading fashion blogs".

The disparity of the girls is also shown in the way they both learn about their father's death. Camino learns of the plane crash directly at the airport, because she wanted to pick up her father. She is in shock, yet has to walk home all by herself. Whereas Yahaira is called to the principal's office where her mom waits for her to tell her of the horrible incident. Yahaira, in contrast, gets picked up from school and is driven home by her mother.

I think it's very clever how Acevedo establishes within the first two chapters that we are dealing with two very different people, and two very different sets of circumstances. I don't know why that didn't hit me as hard during my listen of the audiobook, but during my reread, it was blatantly obvious that Clap When You Land is, amongst other things, a brilliant commentary on privilege, and one we don't see very often, as it doesn't hinge on the question of race, but rather on the place where you were born and live.

In Camino's next chapter, we learn more about her and her life in the DR. We learn that only through her father's life (and job) in the US were they able to have iron locks on their doors, running water in their home, and a working bathroom ... things that distinguish Camino and her aunt Tía from the rest of their neighborhood—things that for Yahaira, and for me, are the most normal thing in the world. Camino also says flat-out that she is 100% financially dependent on her father: "without his help life as we’ve known it has ended."

We also learn that Camino lives amongst hustlers, people her father gave money to to keep an eye on her. One hustler, El Cero, is a central figure in her story:

& I’ve known that from the moment I turned thirteen
Papi paid El Cero a yearly fee to leave me alone.
But the last few months, I’ve felt his eyes on my back.

Early on, Acevedo establishes that he's a threat, and the main reason why Camino feels unsafe where she lives. I also appreciate that Acevedo didn't shy away from including topics such as sex tourism, forced prostitution and human trafficking in her YA novel:

El Cero hustles bodies; eagle-eyed young girls
from the time they are ten & gets them
in his pocket with groceries & a kind word.
When those girls develop & show the
bud of a blossom, he plucks them for his team.

Word on the street is El Cero always gets a first taste
of the girls who work for him. Before he gussies them up
& takes them by the resort beach in cut-off tanks & short shorts

so the men from all over the world who come here for sun
& sex can give thumbs-up or-down to his wares. His women.
Not women, yet. Girls.

Later in the book, Camino explains further:

Even the women, girls like me,
our mothers & tías, our bodies
are branded jungle gyms.

Men with accents pick us
as if from a brochure to climb
& slide & swing.

This storyline surrounding El Cero wanting to pressure Camino into prostitution was horrible to read about, since it's the reality for so many girls. His character made me feel sick to my stomach. And it's just so distressing that he is the reason why Camino knows there is no safe future for her in the DR. Camino lets us know why the beach and the sea are so important to her:

it has saved my life on the many days
when I need a reminder the world is bigger
than the one I know, & its currents are always moving;

when I need a reminder
there is a life for me beyond the water
& that one day I will not be left behind

We then jump back into Yahaira's POV, and I was happy to realise that another reason why the girls' POVs were easier to distinguish whilst reading the book is the fact that Acevedo switched up her writing style: Yahaira's chapters feel a lot more lighthearted, especially in the beginning. Yahaira tells us of her girlfriend Dre, and it's wonderful to see a happy, and healthy lesbian relationship in a YA novel. It was also good to see that Yahaira's mother was very accepting of this relationship, even though her father never realised that Dre was actually her girlfriend.

Through Yahaira, the question of identity for people in the diaspora is raised: "If you asked me what I was, / & you meant in terms of culture, / I’d say Dominican. / No hesitation, / no questions about it. / Can you be from a place / you have never been? / You can find the island stamped all over me, / but what would the island find if I was there? / Can you claim a home that does not know you, / much less claim you as its own?" It's such a complex and interesting topic, and I'm glad Acevedo didn't shy away from addressing it in her book!

When we see Camino again, we are introduced to her friend Carline, who is pregnant, but still has to work endless hours since her family needs the money to eat. Through Carline, Acevedo doesn't just address the topic of teen pregnancy but also the discrimination that Haitian people face in the DR. When Carline goes into labor, Camino notes: "Carline should be in a hospital, / but Maman says the babe is coming too fast, / & they panicked thinking of the logistics. / It is not an easy thing to do, / for a Haitian parent to bring their child / to a Dominican hospital to give birth. / There is already a lot of tension around / who here deserves care; I cannot fault Maman / for being too afraid."

This is also the chapter in which Camino has to reconcile her endless love for her home country ("This everyday kindness in my home. / Even if I could leave, / how would I stomach it?") with the safety hazard that El Cero poses on her life, as he begins following her, stalking her on the beach, and approaching her more and more aggressively. As with any work of Acevedo's, she finds just the right words to describe how it feels to be helpless, violated and vulnerable:

I am glad I am near home,
that there are houses beyond the clearing,
Because in this moment, I am a girl a man stares at:

I am not a mourning girl. I am not a grieving girl.
I am not a parentless girl. I am not a girl without means.
I am not an aunt’s charity case. I am not almost-alone.

There are two things that I didn't like about how the sexual harassment was handled in the story though: 1) There is a scene in which Camino wants to reach out to her aunt Tía to tell her about El Cero, but before she gets the chance, Tía accuses her of having let El Cero on, of inviting him into her life. And that scene rubbed me the wrong way because it was so out of character for Tía. It makes no sense that she would seriously think Camino would’ve hung out with El Cero voluntarily. Tía knows he’s a pimp, and that Camino’s father used to pay him money, so that he would leave Camino alone.

Acevedo uses this scene as a tool to make Camino feel more isolated and ashamed of what's happening to her ... and honestly? I hate that. I wish more YA books would push the message that opening up about your problems is actually PREVENTIVE and HELPFUL. But instead, Acevedo lets it come to El Cero nearly raping Camino in a "thrilling" showdown at the end of the book. Ugh. ISSA NO FROM ME!

And 2) The fact that Camino constantly goes back to the fucking beach, even though she knows that El Cero will be there, and will approach and harass her. I'm not victim blaming her, it just makes no sense to me why Camino would put herself willingly in this very unsafe environment because literally EVERY TIME (!) she goes to the beach to swim, El Cero assaults her in a way. And I know that Acevedo really honed in the message that Camino lOvEs SwImMinG and needs the sea ... but gurl? Really?

I also found it interesting how gentrification comes up in both POVs. Yahaira notices the gentrification in New York: in the area where her tight-knit Dominican American community used to live hipster cafes and bars have sprung up. Meanwhile, Camino notes: "Our land, lush & green, is bought / & sold to foreign powers so they can build / luxury hotels for others to rest their heads."

And it's topics like these that Acevedo incorporates so flawlessly into the narrative. Even though they aren't the focus of the story of the story, it feels natural (and authentic) that they're there, likewise with the topic of police brutality in the US (Yahaira mentioning her coping mechanism when yet another video of a Black boy being shot, or a Black girl being pulled over are trending on social media) or the problem of colorism within BIPOC communities ("The aunts & uncles who said my mom / should have married a lighter-skinned man").

I also loved seeing unravel how the two girls finally learned of each other, and what they thought of each other before interacting, and how they grew to respect and love each other once they met. I found it especially believable that Camino had, initially, a very bad opinion of Yahaira, thinking "Maybe she is busy / being rich & hanging out with her mother / & not thinking about me."

I think I hate this sister
She messages me
that she has acquired a plane ticket.

& how easy she says it.
Because it wasn’t endless paperwork,
Because no one wondered if she would

want to overstay her visa.
The years my father tried
to get me to the States,

& that girl over there fills out a short form,
is granted permission, given a blue book—
shit, an entire welcome mat to the world.

It isn't fair that Yahaira has access to so many things Camino doesn't. It's natural that she feels envy and resentment towards her. I also found it interesting to see their intercultural misunderstandings: "She asks if I can pick her up from the airport. / & I want to ask her what car she thinks I have. / Or maybe she imagines like a mule / I will sling her across my back?" It's clear that Yahaira didn't mean anything bad when she asked Camino to pick her up, but it's also understable that Camino would interpret that in a less favorable way.

Tía’s voice has come
to take me
all these women
here to take me
home

It was beautiful to witness the girls getting closer once Yahaira actually landed in the DR for the funeral. When, at the end, she is the one who saves Camino (alongside with her mother being a baddy and Tía wielding a fucking MACHETE being readyyy to kill El Cero), thinking "We must protect Camino at all cost", I sobbed, because it was so believable. And Camino getting the opportunity to live in the US with her sister didn't feel flat or constructed (as it did when first listened to the audiobook). It made a lot of sense. It's what she had wanted all along: pursuing her dreams, going to medical school, and having a family.

I could go on and on about this book but I'll leave it here!