Grief In Clap When You Land By Elizabeth Acevedo

Processing grief is a highly personal and complex experience that can take many different forms, requiring patience, compassion, and support from oneself and others to navigate it. This theme of grief is shown through the book “Clap When You Land,” by Elizabeth Acevedo. Two different teenage girls, Camino and Yahaira come from very different backgrounds but must both deal with the death of their same father in a sudden plane crash. In “Clap When You Land,” author Elizabeth Acevedo portrays the theme of grief as a transformative process that challenges the characters’ identities and relationships, highlighting the complexities of mourning and the importance of communal support in healing. Grief is dealt with in many different ways as shown

However, this does not make their bond any weaker. Her bond with her dad is very strong which can be seen in how excited she is for him to get back, “Papi’s homecoming, for me, is a national holiday” (9). This explains why her grief is particularly strong and apparent through the actions and imagery in the novel. An example of her obvious grief is on page 19, “I lift my mouth to the cigar. Inhale./Hold the smoke hard in my lungs/until the pain squeezes sharp in my chest/& I cough & couch & couch,/gasping for breath,/tears springing to my eyes” (19). She is attempting to lessen her grief by loosening up with a cigar even though, clearly, she is not used to it evident from the hacking coughs. Acevedo also uses imagery to convey the devastating grief that has been brought upon Camino by her father’s death, “The water-babble rushes my worst thoughts quiet./& I peel my denim shorts off, wade in, slicing through/as if by doing this I could cut to strips my breaking heart” (37) and “I could stop moving. I could just go” (41). These lines not only convey Camino’s intense feelings of grief but the overwhelmingness of the whole situation and how she just