Clap When You Land

Yahaira Rios is 16 and lives in Queens, New York. Because of Yahaira’s habitual rule following, high grades, and friendly rapport with school faculty, Yahaira is blindsided when she is called into the front office at school to receive the news of her father’s death: “I follow directions when they are given / & rarely break the rules / [...] So I have no idea what anyone in the main office / could possibly want with me” (21). In her private relationships, and at school, Yahaira is a passionate and strong-willed achiever, always more comfortable when she can analyze from a distance and use strategy to get what she wants. Before his death, Papi taught Yahaira to be ruthless on a chessboard, an approach that earned her placement in tournaments all over the world. Above all he taught Yahaira composure under pressure, and she often repeats the mantra, “never let / them see you sweat” (176). Although Yahaira is introduced as a perfectly obedient teenager, her extreme grief for the death of her father manifests in rule breaking and lies and, eventually, her decision to leave the country to bury her father against her mother’s wishes.

Yahaira’s name means “light,” and in many ways, this word aligns with her dramatic arc as a truth finder in the novel. When Yahaira finds her father’s name on a marriage certificate to a woman who is not her mother, she begins a search for answers that will challenge her boundaries and set her on a collision course with the sister whose existence her parents tried to keep secret from her. Yahaira is also searching for pieces of herself. She feels that she has been cut off from her Dominican roots, considering that she could never know the island or expect it to know her: “Can you claim a home that does not know you, / much less claim you as its own” (97). When Papi’s body is flown back to be buried in Sosúa, Yahaira’s tenacity and resourcefulness lead her across the ocean on a journey of self-discovery, leading her to confront her father’s other daughter, Camino. By experiencing Camino’s struggles and taking part in the warmth of her community, Yahaira finds an outlet for her light and a new understanding for her culture. Fueled by the need to understand the secrets her father left behind, Yahaira grows out of the need for strict rules—a pivotal shift in her coming of age.

Nurturing and loyal, Carline is Camino’s oldest friend. She splits her time between work at the nearby beach resort, seeing to her studies, and tending to her son, Luciano, who is born dangerously premature. When the resort refuses to grant Carline more time off to care for her delicate infant, Carline loses her job, and she may be forced to drop out of school. For Camino, Carline serves as a foil, representing the sacrifices Camino feels she will one day be forced to make when her ambitions for the future lose out to the material demands of day-to-day survival in Sosúa. Although Camino believes Carline’s dreams to be forfeit for a prosaic life, by the novel’s end she comes to terms with Carline’s calling to motherhood. Carline is one of many dutiful and empowered mothers in the text. In a moment of inspiration, Camino realizes that Carline’s eagerness to learn the work of a healer and her nurturing disposition would make her a fitting apprentice to Tía Solana. Carline’s journey further reinforces the narrative’s overarching theme that community is a method for survival.

Camino describes her girlfriend, Dre, as being “granola to the core” (66). A gardener and active environmental activist, Dre is a deeply empathetic person with a strong moral center. Friction between Yahaira and Dre only arises from Dre’s strong moral convictions, as she is sometimes overbearing in her expectations of others: “Dre is sometimes / too good. She has a scale / for doing what’s right” (78). Her moral sureness is a contrast to Yahaira’s deep introspection, eventually leading to a conflict of ideology when Yahaira is in deep doubt about her decision to go to the Dominican Republic with her father’s body. When Dre tells her that it is the “right thing to do” (259), Yahaira wonders how anyone could judge right from wrong with such sureness. Despite their differing personas, Dre’s compassion and understanding are restorative for Yahaira. After Yahaira is sexually assaulted on the train ride home from her tournament, Dre never pressures her for details, instead wordlessly comforting her: “ran the bath & folded my skirt into the farthest corner / of my closest & we never spoke of it” (177). Later Yahaira echoes this form of unconditional service and love when Camino is assaulted by El Cero at the novel’s climax. In this way, Dre’s goodness fills Yahaira, teaching her.

The daughter of a general, Yahaira’s mother met Papi at the sea wall in Puerto Plata, when they were introduced by a mutual friend, Camino’s mother and Papi’s childhood love. Mami became enamored quickly and, despite her family’s protests, married Papi only to eventually find that he had married Camino’s mother in secret and was leading a double life. Although Mami is a strong woman, she admits that she is “soft-hearted” when it comes to her late husband. Her outpouring of grief and compassion to her family allude to that soft heart. Although she can be brash and quick to anger, Mami’s truest nature lies in her instincts to nurture and fiercely protect her family, especially Yahaira. As a result, Mami’s first instincts are to attempt to guard and cling tightly to Yahaira, which drive them further apart. When the question of Papi’s burial rises, Mami is determined to keep Yahaira from accompanying the body to the Dominican Republic. When Yahaira travels there without her consent, Mami follows. In doing so, she confronts Camino, the daughter whom she worked to keep out of her life. By accepting Camino, providing her a bridge to escape her circumstances and attend college, Mami comes full circle, leaving her fear and pain in favor of acceptance and growth.

In Clap When You Land, Papi’s character is frequently examined and reexamined, both by the lead protagonists, Camino and Yahaira, and by the text itself. In the narrative, those who knew him are quick to acknowledge his ambivalent nature. As Camino and Yahaira compare their memories of their late father, they find various inconsistencies, amounting to a mosaic of a man rather than one coherent persona. For Camino, Papi was a “hustler” accountant who adorned himself in beads and prayed at Tía Solana’s altar. For Yahaira, he was a luxury-loving business owner who, in Yahaira’s estimation, would be hard-pressed to pray at any altar at all. As Yahaira unravels the mystery of her father, Mami can speak with the most authority, recalling how he thought of himself as a stage actor swapping roles: “With me, / he felt like he had to perform, / become a character in a play” (244). In the text, Papi’s bifurcated legacy creates dramatic tension. Like a mystery novel that begins with a death that leads to a slow collection of clues, Camino and Yahaira are drawn together by the mysterious legacy Papi has left behind.

Camino’s aunt on her mother’s side, Tía Solana has been training as a healer in the community long enough to have helped deliver Papi when she was only seven. She represents Camino’s main pillar of support following the death of Camino’s mother. With her no-nonsense style of parenting, she empowers Camino early on with knowledge of Papi’s secret life: “Tía has never lied to me. From the beginning, / any questions I asked she answered” (192). Tía Solana also represents the novel’s gestures toward magic and spirituality. Neighbors come to Tía Solana when they cannot afford modern medicine or simply have no other recourse: “She has a touch they say. She has the Saints’ ears” (207). By favoring the transfer of knowledge to younger generations, Tía serves as a mentor both figuratively and literally, advising and protecting Camino on her journey. Tía Solana’s love is selfless; she even encouraged Camino to leave the Dominican Republic in the novel’s final scene when Camino hesitates at the airport security gates, and she shoos Camino, “Onward. Always onward” (415).