Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Clap When You Land, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family
Secrets
Grief
Money, Security, and Immigration
Growing Up and Sexual Violence
Summary
Analysis
Both Yahaira and Mami are in odd moods, so they tiptoe around each other. Mami writes checks for bills, “spending money / on a promise.” They don’t even have the money yet. Mami doesn’t go to work and misses appointments, which makes her unrecognizable to Yahaira. Still, though, Yahaira doesn’t want Mami to leave, so she keeps making Mami meals (which Mami never touches). Yahaira climbs through the Johnsons’ window sometimes, just to hear noise and escape the tension in her house.
Mami is clearly banking on getting the money from the airline. For now, she seems to see it as an excuse to not worry about going to work, as they’ll have enough money to coast for a while. Yahaira is dealing with her own anxieties: she still seems to fear that Mami might disappear like Papi if she leaves the house. And though it’s comforting for that reason to have Mami at home, things remain tense, and Yahaira’s still not comfortable in her own house.
Themes
Twenty-Three Days After. With school out for the summer, Yahaira can walk without caring where she ends up. She spends her days wandering the neighborhood and ends up on Dre’s front door every evening. Dr. Johnson always hugs Yahaira as she lets her in, and it feels nice to be in a house that feels no different than it did a month ago. Yahaira “let[s] the noises of a whole family lull [her] into sleep.”
These days, Yahaira feels best when she can simply forget about Papi’s death and her grief. This is also why, at the last family gathering, she put on one of Papi’s bachata records—the comforting, familiar rhythm helps her feel secure and as though everything is going to be okay.
Themes
Dr. Johnson asks Yahaira questions—has Yahaira has been sleeping? And has she spoken about her grief to anyone? Yahaira tries to deflect Dr. Johnson’s questions and suggestions to return to grief counseling. Then she returns home to escape the questions. Yahaira used to eat with Dre’s family about once per week, even though Mami and the neighbors didn’t like it. Yahaira liked how she fit in with the Johnsons. But though Yahaira loves them, she’s not sure she can go back now. It’s too hard to look at Dr. Johnson’s “soft, sad eyes,” and it’s hard to be in a place where it seems like Papi never existed.
With Dr. Johnson’s questioning, suddenly, the Johnson home becomes less of a safe space for Yahaira. She wants to forget her grief, not talk about it—and especially not return to grief counseling, which both she and Mami found devastating. As difficult as this is for Yahaira in the moment, though, it suggests that she’s turned a corner: she’s perhaps becoming more ready to address her grief and try to remember Papi.
Themes
Twenty-Five Days After. Wilson stops by, hugs Mami, and compliments her hair—Yahaira isn’t sure Mami’s washed her hair in weeks. Then, Wilson takes a deep breath and says he wants to marry his girlfriend, but he’s afraid to ask her. He asks what a campesino (peasant farmer) has to offer her. Wilson, though, has lived in New York since he was 10; he wears designer clothes and has expensive cologne and whiskey. He’s not a campesino anymore. But he says he can’t afford the ring he wants. Yahaira wants to know what a bank teller like him wants to spend, and if his girlfriend really cares that much. Mami, though, gets up and writes him a check for four figures.
Yahaira’s suspicion shines through here, beginning when Wilson compliments Mami’s clearly dirty hair. The impression Yahaira gets from Wilson’s request is that family members have found out about the airline’s payout—and they now will come to Mami, asking for money even if they don’t technically need it. Wilson, for instance, is someone Yahaira believes should be able to afford a ring on his own, given where else he spends his money.
Themes
Get the entire Clap When You Land LitChart as a printable PDF.
Yahaira wants to call Mami’s family cucarachas—"cockroaches.” All the cousins who called Yahaira ugly, and the aunts who said Mami should’ve married someone else, have been appearing out of nowhere. They compliment Yahaira’s beauty and tell Mami about wanting to get liposuction or help paying their hospital bills or throwing a dream wedding. Soon, Yahaira feels like her tongue is a broom: she tells people to go away—that she and Mami aren’t a bank. Mami tells Yahaira she’s being rude, but Yahaira says people are rude for asking for money. Mami insists family helps each other and then says that Yahaira loved Papi and “ignored the signs.” She says that she wishes she’d stopped loving Papi a long time ago. She says Yahaira doesn’t know how much he embarrassed her. If this money will “unshame” her, Mami says, then that’s just the way it is.
Yahaira finds her relatives’ requests for money particularly offensive since, in her experience, none of them have been all that nice to her or to Mami. They expect Mami to be generous when they themselves have never been kind or compassionate. Mami, though, sees things differently. She realizes that Papi was an imperfect man and partner, and she perhaps believes her relatives were right—that she should’ve married someone else. Mami is clearly very embarrassed, both by Papi’s behavior and by the fact that she chose to stay when he cheated on her. Now, her relatives’ requests for money are a convenient way for her to buy her way out of the shame that has ruled her life for years.
Themes
