Clap When You Land

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Camino has dreams of going to college in New York and studying medicine, and now isn’t even sure how she and her aunt will survive, especially as a dangerous man she has been protected from all this time circles closer. Yet on the day his plane is to arrive and she waits for him at the airport, she learns that his plane has crashed. Their sister-hood grows, and the connection they have from the moment they meet is beautiful, evidence and proof that the 16 years of hiding could not disconnect them. This was my first contact with any of Acevedo's books, I knew all of them, but it was also my first experience with a book in verse. This is one of the most moving explorations of grief that I've ever read, a deep-dive into the lightless depths of what it means to lose something and be utterly unable to move on—not only a literal person, but also a way of life.

Separated by distance - and Papi's secrets - the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. 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.When it emerges that Papi wishes to be buried back in DR, Yahaira's Mami insists that she will never let her "touch foot on the sands of that tierra. Now they are dealing with their grief, starting to learn about each other, trying too hard to adapt in their new lives. great exploration of heritage and family and different life experiences, and the first book i've read set in the dominican republic. Finding out about this secret that you were not aware of isn't something lightly to take, and Yaya's anger and frustration is shown in every page.

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.There was a level of raw emotion and real despair rarely seen in a YA book and that was tempered by love and familial support. It's such a complex and interesting topic, and I'm glad Acevedo didn't shy away from addressing it in her book!

Camino goes to the airport to summon her father and after seeing the crying crowds of people, she startles in shock, in the meantime in New York, Yahaira is summoned to the principal’s office to get the tragic news. To Camino, Papi is a "A king who built an empire so I'd have a throne to inherit", and she lives for the summer months when he comes home to them. 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.Similar to how it’s described in the book, the crash had a large impact on the New York Dominican community.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this woman is incapable of writing anything but 5 star masterpieces.There's also a very astute interrogation of how different tragedies are portrayed in the media, particularly when they touch a minority community: how those stories tend to be quickly robbed of their edges, minimized, or entirely ignored even while those communities are still wrestling with the unutterable weight of loss.