By showing how differently Papi’s daughters live, Clap When You Land highlights how class, nationality, and money aren’t just things that make life more comfortable—rather, money and a passport, the novel shows, can mean the difference between thriving and barely surviving. Yahaira, who grew up in New York City in an apartment that Papi and Mami own, is mostly blind to the privileges that being a middle-class American citizen offer her. She has access to colleges and financial aid, a safe place to live, and enough food to eat. Camino and her aunt Tía, in contrast, live close to poverty. Papi’s money affords them luxuries like a house with a lock, an air conditioner, and a generator, but Camino and Tía still struggle to keep enough food in the house, even before Papi’s death (he’d sometimes send money late). And Camino, as a Dominican citizen with no passport and no easy path to becoming an American citizen, sees clearly how her nationality and her poverty will keep her from achieving her dream to study medicine in the U.S. and become an obstetrician.
As Camino and Yahaira connect—and as Camino learns that the airline is giving Papi’s relatives a half-million dollar advance payout—Camino grows increasingly resentful of Yahaira and afraid for her own prospects. As Papi’s daughter from his legal marriage, Yahaira doesn’t have to fight for the airline’s money, while Camino (whose deceased mother’s marriage to Papi wasn’t valid) believes she’ll have to fight for every penny. And with Papi gone, Camino also learns that her American visa application likely won’t go through, as Mami’s citizenship and income were essential to Camino’s eligibility, and Mami isn’t interested in helping Papi’s other daughter. All of this makes Camino feel like her dream is truly just a dream, and that she’ll have to abandon it to focus on the simple act of survival. While the novel ends with Camino getting a visa and moving to New York with Yahaira and Mami, it’s clear that this outcome is as much a matter of luck as anything else—Camino is lucky that Mami ultimately comes around and is willing to help, but Mami just as easily could have chosen not to help Camino. Still, Clap When You Land ends with the implication that while Camino may be able to overcome the circumstances of her birth and achieve her dreams, for those she leaves behind in the Dominican Republic, poverty, insecurity, and fear will continue to rule their lives.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Money, Security, and Immigration ThemeTracker
Money, Security, and Immigration Quotes in Clap When You Land
To be from this barrio is to be made of this earth & clay:
dirt-packed, water-backed, third-world smacked:
they say, the soil beneath a country’s nail, they say.
I love my home. But it might be a sinkhole
trying to feast quicksand
mouth pried open; I hunger for stable ground,
somewhere else.
If you are not from an island,
you cannot understand
what it means to be of water:
to learn to curve around the bend,
to learn to rise with rain,
to learn to quench an outside thirst
while all the while
you grow shallow
until there is not one drop
left for you.
I know this is what Tía does not say.
Sand & soil & sinew & smiles:
all bartered. & who reaps? Who eats?
Not us. Not me.
Things you can buy
with half a million dollars:
a car that looks more
like a space creature than a car.
[…]
Five hundred flights
to the Dominican Republic.
A half million Dollar Store chess sets,
with their accompanying boxes.
A hundred thousand copies
of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Apparently a father.
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.
I do not want to hate a girl with a glowing name.
But I cannot help the anger planted in my chest, fanning
its palm leaves wide & casting a shadow on all I’ve known.
I wonder what kind of girl learns she is almost a millionaire
& doesn’t at all wonder about the girl across the ocean
she will be denying food. Tuition. A dream.
Unless she doesn’t know about me.
It is strange to go from being an only child
to seeing someone wearing your own face.
Now there is this other person & supposedly she is my sister
where yesterday she was just a name
holding the future I thought I wanted;
now there is a girl of blood & flesh who is
second only to Tía as the closest thing I have to family.
I want to offer her platitudes & murmurs
that it will all be all right. But thing is,
this isn’t an uncommon story.
A lot of people don’t finish school
or follow their dreams. That fairy-tale plotline is for
telenovelas.
I don’t want to be brisk. It almost hurts me to look
into her wide, soft eyes & ask for so much.
But her softness has nothing to do with the desperation
I feel growing inside me. After Papi’s burial
I will have to leave this place. There is nothing
for me in this town where I see my exit doors growing smaller.
& there was a moment when the wheels first touched down
that my heart plummeted in my chest, but then we were slowing
& a smattering of passengers erupted into applause.
The old lady in the seat beside me said in Spanish,
“They don’t do that as much anymore. This must be a plane
of Dominicans returning home;
when you touch down on this soil, you must clap when you land.
Para dar gracias a dios. Regrezamos.” & I smiled back.
Zoila & I speak little on these trips,
but when I’m humming along to a song,
she turns up the radio.
& when her face was red from heat
in the clinic waiting room,
I used a magazine to fan it.
It is awkward, these familial ties & breaks we share.
But we are muddling through it.
