Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve
IDs: Genderqueer, Transgender, Fat, Lesbian, Queer, Terminal Illness, Undocumented, Muslim, POC
Author IDs: White, Nonbinary
CWs: Mild gore, death of parent(s), death of sibling, death of children, decomposing body
Out of Salem is the story of Z, a white genderqueer zombie, and their friendship with Aysel, a fat, Muslim, lesbian werewolf. Magical creatures are outlawed in their world unless properly documented. Aysel is an “undocumented” werewolf. Werewolves, once publicly registered, are often killed or imprisoned, and Aysel's mother chooses not to register her in order to prevent this from happening. Being an unregistered werewolf is a crime, and Aysel and her mother live in fear that her documentation status may be discovered. Z is a recent zombie, having come back to life after they died in a car accident with their entire family. They are the only member of their family to rise from the dead. Zombie-ism is caused by an illegal necromantic spell that must be cast upon the recipient before they die. Z’s mother was the caster, but they don’t know why only they were revived, and how their mother managed to cast the spell secretly. Z’s body still decays, even though they were brought back to life. Because of this, they only have a few months to years to stay alive, and only if they can get enough magic to keep themself and their body alive for that long. They cannot stop their decomposition, only delay it. Although Z was a talented witch in life, as a zombie, they can no longer perform magic, which also means they cannot perform enough magic to sustain their body.
Schrieve’s take on zombie-ism runs an interesting parallel to both transitioning and terminal illness. Z’s fluctuating comfort in their body, the intense change in how people perceive them, the prejudice they experience, and the ways in which they must re-learn how to inhabit their body all mirror both transition and sudden disability. Their degeneration and imminent death parallel terminal illness. By taking elements of these more recognizable embodiments and placing them in zombie-ism, Schrieve defamiliarizes our concepts of gender, transitioning, disability, and illness. Yet they do not make Z monstrous. Instead, we understand Z as a young person who has just suffered a horrific tragedy. The new and challenging ways that they learn to move their body in the world are relatable.
Aysel’s embodied experience, while different than Z’s, has similar echoes of speculative defamiliarization and reimagining. Aysel is fat, and she experiences fatphobia in the book, but is also unafraid to advocate for herself and take up space. She has strong and prolific magic, and throughout the book, her magic becomes an important element of keeping her and Z safe. Her magic is linked to her werewolf identity, which Schrieve also explores in innovative ways. Aysel, like many traditional werewolf narratives, transitions during the full moon each month. Because she is an undocumented werewolf, she must be very careful where she is when she transitions. She is not in full control of her body when she is in her wolf form; or rather, a different part of herself surfaces, and that self is not particularly concerned about her status. Aysel also has flare-ups of her werewolf-ness, which she must carefully keep in check in order to prevent discovery. Her embodied experience is strikingly similar to that of a chronic illness, combined with the fear and danger of being undocumented. While Aysel is not genderqueer, she is a lesbian, and her werewolf-ness and transitions to her wolf form echo elements of gender noncomformity. In this way, she too parallels and echoes elements of disabled, queer existence in our reality.
Schrieve’s novel uses the speculative form and defamiliarization to embody the intersection of genderqueerness, queerness, and disability, while simultaneously showing the ways in which Z and Aysel’s world, even in its fantasticality, still does not accommodate this intersection. Z’s friendship with Aysel and discovery of chosen family reads as both deeply queer and deeply disabled, and evokes the embodied feeling of surviving and learning to navigate the world as a trans, queer, disabled person.
Discussion Questions
1. How does Z’s altered mental disposition relate to their altered body? Is this meant to symbolize or embody disability?2. What parallels do you see between Z’s gender identity and their zombie-ism?
3. There are many harmful racial stereotypes about POC & body hair. Does Schrieve’s depiction of Aysel fall into or rely on these stereotypes? Why or why not? What can we learn from Aysel’s story?
4. How does community function in the novel? How is community tied to queerness and/or disability?