Ten memoirs that explore the nuances of family estrangement

Jenny Bartoy is a French American writer, critic, and editor based in the Pacific Northwest.

Her new book, No Contact, is an anthology about family estrangement. Ocean Vuong called it "a landmark work."

Bartoy writes essays, author profiles and interviews, and book reviews. Her work appears in a variety of publications, including The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, The Rumpus, CrimeReads, Chicago Review of Books, Under the Gum Tree, Room, and Hippocampus Magazine, and in literary anthologies such as Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life.

At Lit Hub Bartoy tagged ten great memoirs that explore "the realities of [family] estrangement with the vulnerability and nuance it deserves, providing a powerful counterpoint to pervasive and reductive sociocultural talking points." One title on the list:

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

In this best-selling memoir, Foo investigates the repercussions of complex PTSD (C-PTSD) caused by her abusive parents and her subsequent estrangement from each of them in turn. The book describes both her research into C-PTSD and her extensive efforts to heal. This is a rich, complex memoir in which Foo explores her familial roots, the impact of intergenerational trauma in Asian-American immigrant communities, the failures of American healthcare, and the patriarchal erasure of women’s suffering. While trauma is its focus, at heart the book wrestles with the concept of parent-less identity and the question of deserving to be loved. “Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had,” Foo writes. “Trauma is mourning the fact that, as an adult, you have to parent yourself.” At times heartwrenching, at others darkly funny, this story provides a vivid and layered glimpse into the perspective of a no-contact adult child.

Read about the other entries on the list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue