So, it’s day four and I’m already straying from my August TBR..but no regrets here.
Book: Clap When You Land
Author: Elizabeth Acevedo
Publication: May 5, 2020
Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis
A plane from New York City to the Dominican Republic goes down in the Atlantic Ocean and there are no survivors. One of the passengers is a man with a secret. He is traveling to DR, the country he grew up in, to be with his daughter for the summer. What he’s leaving behind in New York City is his wife and other daughter who he spends the rest of the year with. The book tells the story of Camino and Yahaira, sisters, who must grapple with feelings of loss, anger, bitterness, jealousy, forgiveness and love while trying to find a new way forward.”I’m the child her father left
her for in the summers.
While she is the child my father
left me for my entire life.”
My thoughts
First off, I really loved this book. I bought this in June, but was a little intimitated by it being written in verse, so it just stayed on my shelf collecting dust. But last weekend I downloaded the BookBeat app just to see if I could enjoy audiobooks and I found this one there. And so my experiment began. I was lying on my bead, wearing my headphones and following the story from the physical copy in my hands. I really can’t imagine a better way to experience this book. And what an experience it was. This audiobook kinda blew my mind. I had tried listening to Michelle Obama’s Becoming last year, but didn’t have the patience for it and so I wrote the whole thing off. But this. This was something else.
I’ll give three reasons why this should be read as an audiobook:
1. Without the audio, I found it a little difficult to read the book. I could of course follow the plot, but I felt like I was missing something essential and couldn’t fully appreciate the writing style that was strange to me. The audio really helped with that aspect. It should be noted that one of the narrators is the author herself, so the reading style is exactly how she intended it to be.
2. There’s a little bit of Spanish every once in a while and while I do know the basics, there was still lots lost in translation. The audio helped with that as well, because while there were no translations there, the narration gave character to the text and made it easier to understand the underlying meaning through intonation etc.
3. At the end of the book there’s no distinction in the text between Yahaira’s and Camino’s povs. I’d imagine that without the benefit of hearing two different voices, it would be more difficult to realize who is actually supposed to be narrating which part.
Never having been to the Carribean, it’s amazing how Acevedo’s writing still transports you to Camino’s village without any overt discriptions about the landscape but just by the power of having Camino’s thoughts and feelings on page. You get to learn about the people closest to Camino and through them you get a glimpse of the troubles that the village and its inhabitants must face every day.
Camino’s life at this point in time consists of hope, sorrow, beauty, defeat, religion and danger. Her dreams and hopes are smashed to pieces with the devastating news of her father’s passing but she is tough and resilient and it’s interesting to see how she plans to continue pursuing her dreams against the odds. The toughness can be also seen in Yahaira, even though the girls come from such different backgrounds. I found them to be essentially quite similar in their stubborness. In their thoughts they are both quick to anger and later feel remorse, but it’s usually Camino who vocalizes her anger while Yahaira holds on to her smile through anger or defeat. Neither one wants to hurt or worry the people closest to them which leads them to make some quite drastic decisions with varying results.
The side characters were quite amazing. Lots of strong women with their own flaws, but strong nonetheless. And I really enjoyed some of them becoming more vulnerable towards the end of the book and explaining their motivation for some actions in their past.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys contemporary YA, the found family trope and is interested in reading about a part of the Dominican Republic and the clash of two cultures inside one girl. The book also tackles issues about colorism, poverty prejudice and priviledge and there is queer rep in this book in an MC.
CW: parental death, sexual harrassment, sexual assault
P.S. How am I doing so far about not being too spoilery? I find it difficult being so vague, but I also don’t want to say too much..
”& so I remember that to walk this world
you must be kind but also fierce.”
”& I wonder what she means & where she learned to judge
so harshly someone she barely just met.”
”We are on the same team, I tell myself.
Even if I don’t actually believe that.”
”Can a ghost be
in two places at once?
Definitely:
if it’s
Papi’s ghost.
Papi’s ghost would have had
a lot of practice.”
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