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
Mami won’t let Yahaira see the “real remains,” but Yahaira studies the photos of bone, hair, and things from Papi’s suitcase that the airline sent. She thinks about Papi’s things that won’t be buried, such as all the questions he left, his “huge absence,” and all the pieces of her life that broke before he died. Yahaira knows that Papi’s remains aren’t just in a casket: they’re all around them.
In this passage, Yahaira essentially realizes that putting Papi’s body in the ground doesn’t actually signal that she and her family will be done grieving. They’ll still have to work to answer the questions Papi left unanswered and to make peace with his actions and his legacy.
Themes
Forty-Nine Days After. Mami decides to hold a wake before Papi’s remains return to the Dominican Republic. Tío Jorge still seems upset with Mami, but he picks Mami and Yahaira up for the wake and sweeps Yahaira into a huge hug. Yahaira can barely look at him, as she wants to pretend that Tío Jorge is actually Papi. But when he tells Yahaira he loves her, using the same pet name Papi did, Yahaira realizes Papi is still here with them. As Yahaira kneels at his casket, she thinks of his smile, throws her shoulders back, and remembers his advice to “Never let them see [her] sweat,” even if she loses.
The fact that Tío Jorge picks Mami and Yahaira up for the wake suggests that Yahaira wasn’t purposefully being entitled when she asked Camino to fetch her from the airport—it’s just what one does, in her experience. Kneeling beside Papi’s casket gives Yahaira something she’s been missing: the opportunity to grieve with other people who are feeling the same thing, and the ability to remember more of the good times than the bad. Even if she never fully forgives Papi, she can remember his advice positively and use it to guide her in the future.
Themes
Mami and Yahaira sit in the front row, and people approach them to “pay their respects.” Yahaira finds this phrase odd, as it suggests that suffering is a debt that people can pay by nodding or hugging. Dre and Dr. Johnson sit next to Yahaira, ready to rescue her if need be. Wilson and his fiancée stand in the back. Yahaira thinks that she can’t make people’s respects into a bouquet or put them in her pocket. Their respects disappear quickly. Meanwhile, Yahaira is left to trudge through her grief alone.
Throughout the novel, Yahaira has expressed confusion about why grief rituals are the way they are—since in most cases, she doesn’t find them particularly helpful. In this situation, she recognizes that the people who “pay their respects” think they’re doing a good thing and that attending the wake helps them feel better. But she also knows their actions are, in theory, supposed to benefit her—and yet they don’t make her feel much better.
Themes
Wilson is wearing all black. Any other day, Yahaira would tease him, but things are different now that Papi is dead. Papi always liked Wilson, and Yahaira thinks that Papi probably wouldn’t have been upset that Wilson asked for money. Papi was so generous, and maybe Yahaira shouldn’t be angry either. Still, Yahaira isn’t sure. She always felt like she could tell what Papi’s next move was going to be. Now, though, she’ll spend her life imagining what he’d say in any given situation.
What does make Yahaira feel marginally better is thinking about Papi and what he’d think of everything. This helps her come to terms with the fact that the family has been asking for money, something that she sees as distasteful and rude. Still, Yahaira recognizes that she perhaps didn’t know her father as well as she thought she did, as she knows now that he kept massive secrets from her.
Themes
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Tomorrow, the funeral director will ship Papi’s body to the Dominican Republic, just like it’s an Amazon order. People come and go from the wake, but Dre stays until the end. Finally, Dre offers Yahaira carnations. Yahaira knows Dre bought them outside the train station and carried them on the bus, just to give them to Yahaira. It makes Yahaira’s throat swell, and with her eyes, she says that the flowers are beautiful, and that Dre is the only part of her life that doesn’t hurt right now.
Papi’s body has to get to the Dominican Republic somehow, but Yahaira takes issue with the fact that “shipping” Papi’s body seems to trivialize the whole thing. He was a person, after all, and her beloved father—and it doesn’t seem appropriate to describe moving his remains using this kind of language. However, Dre manages to make Yahaira feel marginally better, though Yahaira still isn’t able to voice any of her pain (or her thanks).
Themes
Yahaira doesn’t want to tell Dre she’s going to the Dominican Republic, but she can’t keep a secret, so she tells her anyway. Dre shakes her head. She knew Yahaira was going, but asking her to lie to Mami is too much; they’re not white girls in movies, and Yahaira’s plan sounds reckless and dangerous. Yahaira wants to agree—but it seems even odder to Yahaira that the family would let Papi’s remains fly alone. So, Yahaira says nothing as she and Dre gather cards and Mami decides what to do with all the flowers. Finally, Dre grabs Yahaira’s hand, and Yahaira asks to sleep over tonight. Dre says Yahaira can, but she suggests Yahaira talk to Mami first (Mami hates sleepovers).
Yahaira doesn’t seem to pick up on it, but she differentiates herself from Papi in a huge way here: she can’t keep a secret, while he spent his whole life keeping secrets. As Dre sees it, Yahaira’s plan is foolish and unsafe—and after all of Papi’s secrecy, Dre doesn’t really want to keep a secret and doesn’t think Yahaira should either. However, Yahaira feels like she has no choice but to hide from Mami that she flies out tomorrow, as she knows Mami will never let her go—and attending Papi’s funeral is too important to Yahaira to allow that to happen.
Themes
Yahaira knows exactly “what ugly looks like,” when ugly is cruel words. Ugly words can create distance between people. So, she hopes that Mami stays silent during the cab ride home. But Mami says that they should take a trip for Yahaira’s birthday, since Papi would want her to celebrate. Yahaira doesn’t say that Papi would want them at his funeral. She knows Mami is angry, but she also knows Papi was big on “commemorations.” Yahaira has never heard anything so “dumb”; it’s absurd to think of her birthday at a funeral. She tells Mami that the idea is “stupid,” which causes a “picket fence” to go up between Yahaira and Mami. They can see through it, but it’s too high for them to climb.
Yahaira knows how ugly looks because she and Papi discovered exactly that during their phone conversation last summer—the conversation led to Yahaira and Papi barely speaking for a year. Though Yahaira keeps it all inside, she’s beginning to see the purpose of big events like weddings and funerals: it’s important to “commemorate[e]” these big life events, and this is especially true when she’s honoring Papi’s death. In this moment, Yahaira feels like she knows Papi better than Mami does, and so she remains firm in her resolve to go to the Dominican Republic.
Themes
Yahaira tells Mami she’s sleeping at Dre’s house. Mami says nothing, so Yahaira climbs through Dre’s window with her duffel bag. Dre asks if Yahaira told Mami about her plans and says that Mami deserves the truth. Yahaira starts to cry. Everyone has been lying to her for years, but now they expect her to be truthful? She tells Dre that she doesn’t need Dre to lie for her. She just needs time, and she’s certain this is the right thing to do. Dre says nothing in response, she just holds Yahaira all night.
Dre clearly doesn’t agree with Yahaira. She still believes that it’s more important to speak up and tell the truth, perhaps even if that means that Yahaira doesn’t then get to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. Yahaira, though, is too caught up in her grief and in her insistence that her parents haven’t been fair in keeping secrets from her. From her perspective, it’s her turn to keep a secret and nobody should begrudge her that.
Themes
Fifty Days After. Yahaira tries to act cool in the airport check-in line. She knows that she can fly as an adult as a 16-year-old, but she may run into problems if the clerk asks for a signed letter of parental consent. Yahaira tries to get her ticket electronically, but the machine won’t give it to her. Now, she has to talk to a clerk. The clerk checks Yahaira’s passport and asks if Yahaira has a guardian. Sadly, he says they can’t let her go without one. Yahaira fights back her panic. Noticing how young and new the clerk is, Yahaira tells him Papi died on flight 1112, and she’s accompanying his body. She says Mami didn’t know Yahaira would need a guardian. The clerk says Yahaira is almost old enough, so he can let her through.
Up until this point, Yahaira hasn’t really been willing to voice that Papi is dead. To her surprise, she finds that it’s somewhat cathartic (as well as practically useful) to put into words that Papi died in the plane crash. This is her first indication that perhaps speaking up is better than staying quiet—at least, it gets her more of what she wants. Leaving Mami like this also symbolizes Yahaira’s coming of age, as she’s physically moving away from her mother and asserting her independence.
Themes
