Clap When You Land

 

author: Elizabeth Acevedo

Harper Teen, 2019

grades 9-up

(Dominican-American)

Two months after the 9/11 attacks in New York City, an American Airlines flight bound for the Dominican Republic crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport. Many feared another terrorist attack, and the determination of mechanical failure as the cause did little to assuage the trauma in the neighborhood where the plane crashed, in the Dominican Republic, and in the immigrant community of Washington Heights where Elizabeth Acevedo lived. This event became the inspiration for her third YA novel.

Like her acclaimed debut The Poet X, Clap When You Land is a verse novel. It’s told in the alternating points of view of Camino Rios in Sosúa, Dominican Republic, and Yahaira Rios in Washington Heights. Camino and Yahaira are half-sisters about the same age, but at the beginning of the novel, they don’t know it. All they know is their father died in a plane crash en route from New York to Santo Domingo. Camino receives money from her father that allows her to attend private school and harbor dreams of studying in the U.S. to become a doctor. Her father’s money also pays off a local gang leader to keep her safe, which she realizes when she flees her house of mourning and the gang leader pursues her:

I want nothing to do with the crowing roosters,

or the viejos lighting candles & Tía watching the news

& people crowding the patio,

& the prayer circles, & the watchful eyes, &

the whispers about Papi being dead.

But whatever it is El Cero wants from me

I know it will be worse

than the momentary discomfort at Tía’s house.

Because El Cero will attach conditions to his condolences.

Yahaira and her father share a love of chess and the bonds of family and friends…until she discovers a marriage license that belongs to him and another woman. The discovery drives a wedge between them, so that when he dies, Yahaira doesn’t get the chance to hear his side of the story or to say goodbye:

This other woman,

the reason my father left me,

left us broke trust ignored

the family he left behind.

& when he returned last summer,

I didn’t know how to look

him in the face & pretend.

So it was easier not to look at him at all.

When the only words I owned

were full of venom, it seemed better

to stop speaking to this man

since the only option was to poison us all.

For Camino, her father’s death has more practical consequences—the loss of her dream and the fear of violence and sexual exploitation without his protection. When Yahaira tracks down Camino on social media and then travels to the Dominican Republic with her father’s remains, she and Camino discover what they have in common and what they must do to salvage the best of their father’s legacy while accepting his flaws.

Acevedo’s novel is a moving account of disillusionment, grief, and reconciliation. Camino and Yahaira narrate in distinct voices—Camino in three-line stanzas that capture the slower cadence of life in Sosúa, and Yahaira in staccato two-line stanzas that depict her life in New York City. The novel shines brightest when the two sisters come together, their voices sometimes crashing against each other, sometimes intertwined, as they navigate their suddenly ripped-apart and reconstituted family. Secondary characters—Camino’s curandera aunt, Yahaira’s frazzled mother who discovers a newfound take-charge attitude, and Yahaira’s girlfriend and her family—add texture to the relationships and the story. Well-thought-out details of book design contribute to the reader’s understanding of Camino and Yahaira’s different worlds. 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(published 4/12/2021)

The Poet X

author: Elizabeth Acevedo

HarperTeen, 2018

grades 8-up

Dominican American

Written by an acclaimed slam poet, The Poet X is the verse novel of 2018—winner of the National Book Award and the ALA/YALSA Printz Award. Acevedo’s young adult debut is the story of a girl who finds her voice through poetry. Xiomara is the big, unattractive, less academically gifted, less obedient, female twin in a conservative Catholic Dominican immigrant family:

I am unhide-able.

Taller than even my father, / with what Mami has always said / was “a little too much body for such a young girl.” / I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips / so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school / now ask me to send them pictures of me in a thong.

Her parents forbid her to interact with boys even though the boys whistle at her and try to talk to her on the street, and one boy in particular, the kind, music-loving Aman is paired with her in biology class. And her mother makes her attend confirmation class every Tuesday afternoon, which conflicts with the poetry club her favorite teacher, Ms. Galiano, has started.

Xiomara struggles with Catholic teachings and with the characterization of women, via Eve, as weak and vulnerable to temptation, thereby justifying the harsh restriction of women and girls. Set in New York City, where teenagers have freedom and temptations are everywhere, Xiomara struggles against her mother’s strict rules bordering on fanaticism. Her mother grounds her, beats her, and attempts to destroy everything that Xiomara values. Xiomara is already late in getting her confirmation, to her mother a sign of her sinfulness and failure and to her, a big part of her growing self-doubt and questioning of everything she has been taught:

“Mami, what if I don’t

Do confirmation?

What if I waited a bit for—”

But she cuts me off,

her index finger a hard exclamation point

in front of my face.

“Mira, muchacha,”

she starts, “I will

feed and clothe no heathens.”

While many verse novels use visual images as their point of reference, Acevedo’s novel uses music—the songs of Nicki Minaj, Drake, and other R&B stars. This works well with Xiomara’s decision to perform slam poetry, and her verse captures the musicality of the R&B genre as well as the code switching among English, Spanish, and Dominican slang—as, for instance when she shows the Dominican men “finishing their dominoes tournament with hard slaps / and yells of “Capicu!”

Running throughout this story of coming of age, first romance, and discovering a beloved brother’s deepest secret, is the central theme of a young woman coming of age, coming to terms with her sexuality, and finding her voice. For Xiomara, who chooses to perform her slam poetry under the name “The Poet X,” free verse is the freedom to be herself, to say what she wants, to make her choices, and to come to terms with her own version of faith.

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(published 1/28/19)