Nonbinary Life: An Autotheory

by Marquis Bey, Ciara Cremin (Series Editor), Abraham Weil (Series Editor)

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 to lead a non-binary 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.

Spanning questions of pronouns, masculinity, love, family, language, and even the Redwood National Forest, Nonbinary Life blends memoir and theory to provide a philosophical meditation on what it means to live beyond the binary

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2026

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this alongside the first two sections of Gravity’s Rainbow, and honestly it kind of felt like a reprieve from all of Pynchon’s cynicism and ego. This book is just so intuitive—almost too much so. It’s like it’s already been written before. Not in a comforting way, more like it’s being repeated rather than actually discovered. That might not be totally fair, though. I feel I’m not in the right headspace (or place?) to really get what the book is doing or why it matters. I’m curious to see how I feel after book club tomorrow. Right now it strikes me as too ordinary. Even tho I completely agree with its arguments and objectives. Perhaps I’m defensive bc I’m raising 8 and 11 year old kiddos? What kind of violence am I doing to them without thinking? Ugh. Double ugh. Triple ugh.