Narrating Estrangement

The stories in Narrating Estrangement: Autoethnographies of Writing Of(f) Family demonstrate the pain, anguish, and even relief felt by those who contemplate estranging or who are estranged, whether by choice or circumstance. Despite the social assumptions persisting about the everlasting nature of family relationships, when people make the complicated and often difficult decision to disconnect from family members, they experience shame, stigma, and isolation because of social pressures to maintain those relationships at all costs.

Each contributor uses the act of storytelling and the autoethnographic mode of scholarship and writing to find clarity in their individual, unique, and complex situations. Several authors¿ explorations restore some of what they have lost through estrangement¿such as a sense of identity, emotional health and well-being, and feelings of belonging¿due to the breakdowns in social and family support systems meant to be unconditional and "permanent