By Ashliegh Gehl
There’s more than 1,400 miles between New York City and Puerto Plata. Most of the space between is composed of water. Ocean, which connects and divides Yahaira and Camino, central characters in Elizabeth Acevedo’s contemporary young adult novel Clap When You Land. A 417-page read published by HarperTeen.
The novel’s poetic structure is transient. The reader, a passenger in perpetual flight, first touches down in Camino’s Dominican Republic where she is anticipating the arrival of her father who is on flight 1112 out of JFK International Airport. A routine three-hour and thirty-six-minute flight that never reaches its final destination. It leaves no survivors, only wreckage, heartache, uncertainty and fear.
As Camino says:
I am beginning to learn
that life-altering news
is often like a premature birth:
ill-timed, catching someone unaware,
emotionally unprepared
& often where they shouldn’t be:
Although fiction, flight 1112 is loosely based on American Airlines flight 587. It was headed to Santo Domingo but shortly after take-off crashed in Queens, New York and killed 260 passengers, including five others on the ground. An incident which took place on November 12, 2001 – two months after 9/11. Often referred to as the “forgotten” plane crash, flight 587 is one of the worst aviation disasters in American history and has not been forgotten by those impacted by the tragedy.
Connecting this real-life event to a fictional narrative is part of the book’s strength. Acevedo grips the heart of grief and draws from emotions and experiences brought on by flight 587. She gives grief a platform through verse which connects the story of two estranged sisters, born of two different mothers, who are countries apart and united by a hustler of a father whose secrets ballooned like life vests after his plane crashed.
Clap When You Land is a novel of discovery and an exploration into identity. It feels like non-fiction because the characters and everything they go through are relatable, understandable, sad and in full bloom. It’s jaw-dropping beautiful how Acevedo carefully chooses the perfect words to describe the isolated, yet unified, experiences Camino and Yahaira independently navigate. The death of a father is unchartered waters for both.
There’s a heartwarming rawness to the way Acevedo describes Yahaira’s and Camino’s family situations and their respective communities. Neither is ideal, or without complications. It’s easy to be carried away by the stunning structure, powerful storyline and authentic portrait of sisterhood as their journeys unravel.
The arc of Acevedo’s writing resembles the landscape of the ocean. It takes you into the depths of loss and longing, and deeper into a character’s state of being. So deep, that just when you gasp out of shock or beauty, Acevedo pulls you into the shallow waters and brings you closer to shore. The seamless ebb and flow swiftly move the story along; a quiet current, a sneaky tide that rises while you’re not paying attention. Only when you look up from the page do you realize that you’ve travelled through sixty days of heartbreak with two unforgettable characters who will stay with you long after the novel ends.