“Storytelling isn’t just how we construct our identities; stories are our identities,” remarked John Holmes, Professor Emeritus of the University of Waterloo. In her memoir, Departure Stories, Elisa Bernick uses Holmes’s assertion as an epigraph, which remains central as she recounts her traumatic childhood growing up Jewish and with divorced parents in Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s.

“Under the norms of Minnesota Nice, the author explains, “it’s not polite to acknowledge difference. It’s considered rude, like staring at someone who’s in a wheelchair. Differences make Minnesotans uncomfortable, and the word itself is a common Minnesota pejorative — a not-so-secret code that politely expresses your discomfort at something outside of your White Christian experience … thanks to Minnesota Nice, unless I brought up my Jewish difference, neither my religion nor my difference existed.”

“Departure Stories by Elisa Bernick–a writer/journalist from Minnesota–is an inviting, deeply poignant first memoir that offers an intergenerational smorgasbord of well-balanced, well-portioned personal stories, anecdotes, jokes, Jewish history and heritage—and insight.”
Reading Between the Lines
BY KATHLEEN GERARD
‘Elisa Bernick’s new book, “Departure Stories,” is unique among the many memoirs—from Mary Karr to Julia Child to Stephen King—that I’ve read. The book is seasoned with history, statistics, science, philosophy, jokes, and recipes. The first half is primarily Elisa’s story growing up Jewish in “Minneapolis…the most antisemitic city in the country” with an abusive mother and an emotionally absent father. The second half of the book is a thoughtful treatise on how what we remember and what we forget shapes us and our lives.’
By the Book BTX
REBECCA BENNETT
“In the acknowledgments of her thoughtful and moving memoir, “Departure Stories,” Elisa Bernick thanks a mentor who counseled her not to turn her story into a novel. Readers, too, will want to thank this person, because the originality of the approach taken here is a big part of the book’s charm. And considering the sad story it tells, “charming” itself is an accomplishment.”

By Marion Winik Special to the Star Tribune
“Journalist Bernick (The Family Sabbatical Handbook) delivers a poignant, witty, and often painful chronicle of growing up in a Jewish family in a predominantly Christian suburb of Minneapolis in the 1960s. She and her family were tolerated but certainly not accepted, being treated to a “different perspective of Minnesota’s brand of ‘nice.’ ”

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)