Book Review: Depart, Depart!

Depart, Depart!

A devastating and breathless story about the complexity of identity, the power of community amidst crisis, and the sacrifices you make in order to survive.

When a storm like no other wipes out Houston, Texas, hundreds of people take refuge in a Dallas basketball arena. Noah Mishner is just trying to survive like all the other refugees, but as a trans man, he's acutely aware that his transness may complicate his survival. What's more, there’s a ghost who won’t leave him alone - the ghost of his grandfather, who may be trying to help him survive… or lead him horribly astray.

Depart, Depart! is an apocalyptic pilgrimage through a future that may well become reality. Sim Kern’s prose is gorgeous, and their depiction of this catastrophe is vivid enough to make you feel as though you are there yourself, in a claustrophobic, dirty, overcrowded stadium that is the only home you have left. You see your necessities laid bare, all luxuries stripped away, any prior plans for your life rendered meaningless. Both Noah and the reader must come face-to-face with the biggest questions of disaster: what do I do when the worst happens? Who will provide for me, and how much? How do I live with myself after leaving my loved ones behind?

But perhaps even more moving than the apocalypse itself is how it forces Noah to grapple with his conception of self. Noah is young, and he is alone, and he is also trans and Jewish - two identities he is still figuring out how to navigate. And catastrophe, he learns, doesn’t make these things less important, but rather casts them into an even starker light. Not only must Noah come to grips with the crumbling city around him and everything he has lost, he must also navigate this terrifying new reality while knowing he is at great risk of violence because of the identities he holds, because of the space he occupies in this mass of humanity. These parts of him are just as significant as every other aspect of survival; he must constantly be aware of his surroundings, look out for possible threats, calculate his every move for things as “simple” as going to the restroom or finding a place to sleep. 

This is a hard and painful truth: when our basic welfare systems fail us (as so many currently are), people of color, queer folks, and other marginalized individuals are among the first who feel the impact. They are the ones who are most in danger. Noah does not forget this for one moment, and his struggle to maintain a grip on who he is while managing the constant battle of survival hits deep for anyone whose existence does not conform to the white, cishet “standard.”

Yet even in the face of violence and trauma, in the middle of this apocalypse, there is strength and shelter to be found. For Noah, this means a makeshift family of queer elders and peers, a group of people who understand innately what it means to be marked and who look out for one another in defiance of the bigotry surrounding them. It also means a religious community that offers new answers to questions he’s been asking himself for years. And it means blood, heritage, ghosts of past and present who surround him and give him the strength he needs to fight back. Of course, it’s not always that simple - all of these people have as much power to hurt him as they do to help, and many of them do, in ways that cut fast and deep. Even as he seeks safety in numbers, there are still things Noah must work out himself, things he must go through on his own. But in the book’s darkest moments, when Noah is faced with his most impossible choice, it is the bonds he has inherited and cultivated that prove to be the difference between life and death.

Depart, Depart! is a devastating and breathless story about the complexity of identity, the power of community amidst crisis, and the sacrifices you make in order to survive. Sim Kern has created a masterpiece that will both break your heart and heal it over again, and I cannot recommend this novella enough. 

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You can preorder Depart, Depart! on Indiebound or directly from Stelliform Press. Its release date is September 1st, 2020. To learn more about Sim Kern, visit their website at http://simkern.com, and be sure to check out their other publication credits - including their short story, “Tadpoles,” in Wizards in Space Issue 04.