Nonbinary Life
An Autotheory
Will be published approx. on 16. April 2026
Book
Hardback
192 pages
978-1-350-58893-6 (ISBN)
Description
Nonbinary Life is an invitation to imagine the possibilities of life outside of gender.
To write, to think, to imagine, to agitate, and to love without regard for gender is what might be called a nonbinary way of life. In this genre-defying work of autotheory, Marquis Bey proposes a radical refusal: to relinquish gender as a framework we carry - for ourselves and for others - and to embrace modes of being that exist outside of its grasp. What if we no longer let gender be a way of organizing ourselves?
Spanning the question of pronouns, masculinity, love, family, language, and even the Redwood National Forest, Nonbinary Life blends memoir and theory to provide a robust and personal treatment of what it means to live beyond the binary.
To write, to think, to imagine, to agitate, and to love without regard for gender is what might be called a nonbinary way of life. In this genre-defying work of autotheory, Marquis Bey proposes a radical refusal: to relinquish gender as a framework we carry - for ourselves and for others - and to embrace modes of being that exist outside of its grasp. What if we no longer let gender be a way of organizing ourselves?
Spanning the question of pronouns, masculinity, love, family, language, and even the Redwood National Forest, Nonbinary Life blends memoir and theory to provide a robust and personal treatment of what it means to live beyond the binary.
Reviews / Votes
When Marquis Bey pronounces the word nonbinary, it rhymes simultaneously with abolition, utopia, nope, and why not? Rather than launching a counterpolemic to characterizations of the nonbinary as a positionality without a politics, Bey disengages from those agonistics to imagine a freedom beyond the carcerality of gender. * Professor Susan Stryker, author and co-editor of books including Transgender History (2008), The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (2022), and When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader (2024). * Marquis Bey's Non-Binary Life is a lovely and poetic personal meditation on living non-binary in a way-too-binary world-on race and class and burner genders, on the real cost of telling gender truths, and of sometimes just saying 'Sorry, but no' to gender. * Riki Wilchins, activist and author of books including Let's (Not) Talk About (Transgender) Sex, (Bloomsbury, 2026) *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 209 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
285 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-58893-6 (9781350588936)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University, USA. They are the author of Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (2022), Black Trans Feminism (2022), Anarcho-blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism (2020), Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism (2019)
Content
Author's (love) note (Introduction)
Part One
1. Carrying What is Not Mine to Carry
2. Gender is Not the Thing
Part Two
3. Burner Gender
4. He/They, She/They
Part Three
5. A Man's World
6. 16 bars
Part Four
7. nbffs (nonbinary friends forever)
Redwoods (Conclusion)
Index
Part One
1. Carrying What is Not Mine to Carry
2. Gender is Not the Thing
Part Two
3. Burner Gender
4. He/They, She/They
Part Three
5. A Man's World
6. 16 bars
Part Four
7. nbffs (nonbinary friends forever)
Redwoods (Conclusion)
Index