Simultaneously, a young woman waiting for her father to arrive in the Dominican Republic for his annual visit learns his plane has crashed en route. In a similar but fictional aviation accident, a young woman in Queens learns that her father has died. In her fourth novel-in-verse, Clap When You Land, Acevedo returns to the horror of American Airlines Flight 587, and the lives upended and uprooted as a result of it. It’s a masterful book, and deservingly swept the awards scene for Young Adult fiction in 2018. The book revolves around the majority Dominican neighborhood of Morningside Heights and traces the coming-of-age of Xiomara “X” as she finds her voice through poetry.

A young Elizabeth Acevedo, growing up in a majority Dominican neighborhood, grew up in the light of this plane crash, always remembering how quickly the media-cycle stopped covering such a pivotal event just once it was determined that the crash was not a terrorist incident.Įlizabeth Acevedo, an Afro-Latina poet and previous National Slam Champion, took the YA world by storm in 2018 with her National Book Award winning, The Poet X. The crash rocked Dominican neighborhoods in New York, where almost everyone knew someone who knew someone who was on the plane. Most of the passengers were Dominican, either heading home or going to visit relatives. On November 12, 2011, a plane carrying 251 passengers en route to the Dominican Republic crashed shortly after takeoff in Queens, New York.

A Review of Clap When You Land: A Novel-in-Verseīuy Now:

Clap when you land elizabeth acevedo