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No Contact: Writers on Estrangement
“A landmark work around a theme so prominent—and yet so thoroughly ignored—in modern life.” —Ocean Vuong
A poignant and galvanizing anthology that illuminates the realities and nuances of family estrangement, with pieces by Stephanie Foo, Nick Flynn, Deesha Philyaw, Cheryl Strayed, and others
Estrangement presents an essential existential who are we without our family? What kind of person cuts the proverbial umbilical cord and why? And who do we become, once untethered from our kin?
Families fall apart and individuals cut ties for myriad reasons—abuse, politics, mental illness, and addiction, among others—and reunification often is not in the cards. Estrangement can be a positive change, as Emi Nietfeld explains in her essay about finding relief and logic after cutting off her mother. It can be a noam keim rebuilds their sense of self by learning Arabic in their ancestral homeland of Morocco, while Nicole Graev Lipson searches for answers in literature and motherhood after her brother ghosts her. Other writers explore how estrangement complicates life’s big shifts—Domenica Ruta traces the repercussions of severing ties while battling cancer; Hannah Bae reels from the prospect of cultural alienation when she cuts off her Korean parents; and after twenty years of separation, Soni Brown reluctantly becomes her mother’s caretaker as dementia erases her memory.
Through thirty-two intimate, first-person accounts, No Contact counters the prevalent trope of reconciliation as a happy ending, focusing instead on the complex grief, healing, and authenticity found in the rupture from family.
Featuring work by Hannah Bae, Eben E. B. Bein, Soni Brown, Lorne Daniel, Lindsey Danis, Michelle Dowd, Nick Flynn, Stephanie Foo, Gabriela Denise Frank, Susan Ito, Danielle Jernigan, noam keim, Erika Krouse, Monique Laban, Cassandra Lewis, Kate Lewis, Nicole Graev Lipson, Tiffany Aldrich MacBain, Jamal Mahjoub, Onita Morgan-Edwards, Emi Nietfeld, Geneva Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, Anna Qu, Domenica Ruta, Oslyn Serratos, Alyson Shelton, Cheryl Strayed, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Raksha Vasudevan, Jane Wong, and Kristen Millares Young.
A poignant and galvanizing anthology that illuminates the realities and nuances of family estrangement, with pieces by Stephanie Foo, Nick Flynn, Deesha Philyaw, Cheryl Strayed, and others
Estrangement presents an essential existential who are we without our family? What kind of person cuts the proverbial umbilical cord and why? And who do we become, once untethered from our kin?
Families fall apart and individuals cut ties for myriad reasons—abuse, politics, mental illness, and addiction, among others—and reunification often is not in the cards. Estrangement can be a positive change, as Emi Nietfeld explains in her essay about finding relief and logic after cutting off her mother. It can be a noam keim rebuilds their sense of self by learning Arabic in their ancestral homeland of Morocco, while Nicole Graev Lipson searches for answers in literature and motherhood after her brother ghosts her. Other writers explore how estrangement complicates life’s big shifts—Domenica Ruta traces the repercussions of severing ties while battling cancer; Hannah Bae reels from the prospect of cultural alienation when she cuts off her Korean parents; and after twenty years of separation, Soni Brown reluctantly becomes her mother’s caretaker as dementia erases her memory.
Through thirty-two intimate, first-person accounts, No Contact counters the prevalent trope of reconciliation as a happy ending, focusing instead on the complex grief, healing, and authenticity found in the rupture from family.
Featuring work by Hannah Bae, Eben E. B. Bein, Soni Brown, Lorne Daniel, Lindsey Danis, Michelle Dowd, Nick Flynn, Stephanie Foo, Gabriela Denise Frank, Susan Ito, Danielle Jernigan, noam keim, Erika Krouse, Monique Laban, Cassandra Lewis, Kate Lewis, Nicole Graev Lipson, Tiffany Aldrich MacBain, Jamal Mahjoub, Onita Morgan-Edwards, Emi Nietfeld, Geneva Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, Anna Qu, Domenica Ruta, Oslyn Serratos, Alyson Shelton, Cheryl Strayed, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Raksha Vasudevan, Jane Wong, and Kristen Millares Young.
304 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 13, 2026
This book really helped me understand and sort out my feelings, being an adult daughter of a narcissist mother. Setting emotional boundaries and self-protection is crucial. Thank you.
May 28, 2026
Reading this felt like turning on a bright light in a dark room I didn’t even know I was standing in. Feels perfectly true to life, family and relationships. Compelling and devastating. Will stick with me for a long time.
May 3, 2026
This is a collection of essays & poems from writers who are estranged (low or no contact) from members of their family. It's also a rollercoaster of emotions and a veritable tapestry of diverse experiences with estrangement across race, nationality, genders, age, religion, and cultures.
As someone who is estranged from my some people in my family, this was a TOUGH read, but very necessary & worth seeing my experience given space to breathe.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
As someone who is estranged from my some people in my family, this was a TOUGH read, but very necessary & worth seeing my experience given space to breathe.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
April 29, 2026
There are a myriad of reasons one chooses to go "no contact"-- cut all ties-- with family or loved ones, and it's not a decision made lightly. This anthology includes many walks of life and the ways these writers cope with this particular loss and the ache that comes with it. No Contact also serves as comfort to the heart; a reminder to readers that they aren't alone with this pain.
May 25, 2026
I picked up this book to better understand some of my family history. I finished it within a week, and found it to be a deep emotional journey. These essays are not always easy, the authors do not pull punches. Through telling their stories, the writers invite us into their wounds. Be ready, do not pick up this book lightly. If you do pick it up, be ready to also open up and face the many ways estrangement is present in our relationship and within ourselves.
May 9, 2026
“And more than any grief or resentment, that reminds me of why I won’t—can’t—return to them. Distance is the only way I know to preserve that tenderness. The only way, too, to protect the self I see in that photo, her bright eyes, her open, unafraid face. Estrangement is the only way to keep from becoming a stranger to myself.” – Raksha Wasudevan, “The Many Meanings of Family Estrangement”
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was published in the US by Catapult on April 28th, 2026.
Jenny Bartoy opens No Contact by describing estrangement as “both an orphaning and metamorphosis,” and that framing lingers over the entire collection. These essays understand estrangement not as a singular act of rejection, but as a slow and devastating reshaping of the self. Across memoir, cultural criticism, and deeply intimate reflection, the contributors write about the grief, guilt, relief, shame, loneliness, and strange freedom that can come from severing ties with family. What emerges is not a defense of estrangement so much as an insistence that survival sometimes requires it.
This anthology feels especially urgent because it pushes back against the cultural myth that reconciliation is always the healthiest or most morally righteous ending. Again and again, these writers reveal the impossible expectations placed on estranged people, especially survivors of abuse. Alyson Shelton writes powerfully about how staying in abusive family systems would render her invisible, while Emi Nietfeld explores the painful process of relinquishing the fantasy that an abusive parent might someday change. Domenica Ruta’s essay was one of my favorites for the way it names the “collateral damage” of estrangement and illuminates how conditional love can hollow out entire family systems. Raksha Vasudevan and noam keim also stood out to me for how they connect estrangement to migration, ancestry, language, and cultural belonging, revealing how family rupture can reverberate through identity itself.
“The stories featured in these pages show that in estrangement, we may lose family, but we can also find ourselves anew—stronger and whole.” – Jenny Bartoy, Introduction
The prose throughout the collection is intimate, lucid, and emotionally exacting. Many of these essays pair sharp social critique with lyrical reflections on memory and embodiment, giving estrangement a language expansive enough to hold contradiction. The contributors understand that it is possible to miss someone deeply and still know reconciliation would destroy you.
As someone who has been estranged from my mother for almost a decade, this collection felt quietly revolutionary. When I first went no contact, I didn’t even have language for what I was experiencing. I only knew I was surviving something people preferred not to name. No Contact offers that language with immense care. More importantly, it offers community. Bartoy has assembled a beautifully diverse, deeply compassionate anthology that refuses to flatten estrangement into cruelty or failure. Instead, these essays ask what becomes possible when we stop forcing people to remain inside systems that harm them. Thank you to these writers and, above all, thank you, Jenny. We can and will survive.
“I know now, with absolute certainty, that I deserve a life without terror. It was him or me. And I chose me. I no longer live in fear of the floodwaters of his abuse. In this world I fashioned from my choices, I am sometimes at sea. But I am the vessel, the ocean, and the weather.” – Alyson Shelton, “Blood Is Thicker Than Water”
Content Note: Please note that there is a detailed description of sexual assault at approximately 27% in the essay “Prodigal Daughter” by Michelle Dowd.
📖 Read this if you love: intimate essay collections about family rupture and survival; emotionally honest memoirs about abuse, healing, and identity; or trauma-informed narratives about breaking cycles, reclaiming selfhood, and surviving harmful family systems.
🔑 Key Themes: Estrangement and Going No Contact, Abuse and Survival, Family Systems and Scapegoating, Cultural Expectations and Family Loyalty, Cycles of Trauma and Healing, Self-Preservation and Autonomy, Breaking the Cycle.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse (severe), Mental Illness (severe), Sexual Assault (severe), Panic Attacks (severe), Death of Parent (severe), Drug Abuse (moderate), Emotional Abuse (moderate), Cancer (moderate), Suicidal Thoughts (moderate), Alcoholism (moderate), Alcohol (moderate), Cults (moderate), Drug Use (minor), Physical Abuse (minor), Domestic Abuse (minor), Vomit (minor), Pandemic (minor), Abandonment (minor), Pedophilia (minor), Blood (minor), Medical Content (minor), Incest (minor), Gun Violence (minor), Ableism (minor), Suicide Attempt (minor).
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was published in the US by Catapult on April 28th, 2026.
Jenny Bartoy opens No Contact by describing estrangement as “both an orphaning and metamorphosis,” and that framing lingers over the entire collection. These essays understand estrangement not as a singular act of rejection, but as a slow and devastating reshaping of the self. Across memoir, cultural criticism, and deeply intimate reflection, the contributors write about the grief, guilt, relief, shame, loneliness, and strange freedom that can come from severing ties with family. What emerges is not a defense of estrangement so much as an insistence that survival sometimes requires it.
This anthology feels especially urgent because it pushes back against the cultural myth that reconciliation is always the healthiest or most morally righteous ending. Again and again, these writers reveal the impossible expectations placed on estranged people, especially survivors of abuse. Alyson Shelton writes powerfully about how staying in abusive family systems would render her invisible, while Emi Nietfeld explores the painful process of relinquishing the fantasy that an abusive parent might someday change. Domenica Ruta’s essay was one of my favorites for the way it names the “collateral damage” of estrangement and illuminates how conditional love can hollow out entire family systems. Raksha Vasudevan and noam keim also stood out to me for how they connect estrangement to migration, ancestry, language, and cultural belonging, revealing how family rupture can reverberate through identity itself.
“The stories featured in these pages show that in estrangement, we may lose family, but we can also find ourselves anew—stronger and whole.” – Jenny Bartoy, Introduction
The prose throughout the collection is intimate, lucid, and emotionally exacting. Many of these essays pair sharp social critique with lyrical reflections on memory and embodiment, giving estrangement a language expansive enough to hold contradiction. The contributors understand that it is possible to miss someone deeply and still know reconciliation would destroy you.
As someone who has been estranged from my mother for almost a decade, this collection felt quietly revolutionary. When I first went no contact, I didn’t even have language for what I was experiencing. I only knew I was surviving something people preferred not to name. No Contact offers that language with immense care. More importantly, it offers community. Bartoy has assembled a beautifully diverse, deeply compassionate anthology that refuses to flatten estrangement into cruelty or failure. Instead, these essays ask what becomes possible when we stop forcing people to remain inside systems that harm them. Thank you to these writers and, above all, thank you, Jenny. We can and will survive.
“I know now, with absolute certainty, that I deserve a life without terror. It was him or me. And I chose me. I no longer live in fear of the floodwaters of his abuse. In this world I fashioned from my choices, I am sometimes at sea. But I am the vessel, the ocean, and the weather.” – Alyson Shelton, “Blood Is Thicker Than Water”
Content Note: Please note that there is a detailed description of sexual assault at approximately 27% in the essay “Prodigal Daughter” by Michelle Dowd.
📖 Read this if you love: intimate essay collections about family rupture and survival; emotionally honest memoirs about abuse, healing, and identity; or trauma-informed narratives about breaking cycles, reclaiming selfhood, and surviving harmful family systems.
🔑 Key Themes: Estrangement and Going No Contact, Abuse and Survival, Family Systems and Scapegoating, Cultural Expectations and Family Loyalty, Cycles of Trauma and Healing, Self-Preservation and Autonomy, Breaking the Cycle.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse (severe), Mental Illness (severe), Sexual Assault (severe), Panic Attacks (severe), Death of Parent (severe), Drug Abuse (moderate), Emotional Abuse (moderate), Cancer (moderate), Suicidal Thoughts (moderate), Alcoholism (moderate), Alcohol (moderate), Cults (moderate), Drug Use (minor), Physical Abuse (minor), Domestic Abuse (minor), Vomit (minor), Pandemic (minor), Abandonment (minor), Pedophilia (minor), Blood (minor), Medical Content (minor), Incest (minor), Gun Violence (minor), Ableism (minor), Suicide Attempt (minor).
May 4, 2026
This book is deeply moving and thought provoking. It shares 32-first person accounts of estrangement (full and partial) between many kinds of family members. It hits on the diverse whys but does not get stuck there, letting each writer share what they see as important about their experience. I will be thinking about this one for a long time. There are no simple answers in family.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews