Cistem Failure

Marquis Bey is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Northwestern University and author of several books, most recently Black Trans Feminism, also published by Duke University Press.

• Preface. Cistem Failure  ixAcknowledgments  xviiBack in the Day  1Heart of Cisness  21How Ya Mama’n’em?  47Notes on (Trans)Gender  61Blowing Up Narnia  87RE: [No Subject]  105The Coalition of Gender Abolition  129Notes  147Bibliography  153Index  161

"I found Cistem Failure by Marquis Bey really exciting. In it, Bey wonders whether and how blackness is at odds with cisgender identity. I love when a book articulates things I haven’t been able to put into words. It is as if something that had been squirming inside me settles." - Chantal V. Johnson (The Millions) "In 2019, Bey’s debut collection Them Goon Rules changed me as a scholar, a feminist, an accomplice and a person; Black Trans Feminism is just as imperative. I forced myself to decide between this one and Bey’s Cistem Failure, which was also released this year. Well, hell, just read ‘em both." - Karla J. Strand (Ms. Magazine) “Marquis and their work provide much room for fruitful engagement with critical animal studies. . . . Marquis’s form is highly artistic and this keeps their essays begging to be acknowledged and revisited, as any good piece of art should. Bey’s writing is really an experience. They write otherwise as they encourage the reader to imagine otherwise, other ways of being.” - Nathan Poirier (Journal for Critical Animal Studies) “Written with tongue-in-cheek humour and deep vulnerability, Cistem Failure speaks to scholar-activists across disciplines who are invested in livability and collective liberation. . . . Although Bey speaks only to their particular experience, they position themself as potential kin to anyone whose life does not map neatly onto the cistrans binary or who is committed to the project of gender abolition.” - Derek P. Siegel (Ethnic and Racial Studies) “Bey’s conceptualization of gender as a prison and the surveillance that comes with it enriches the field of feminist abolition studies to think about how gender and carcerality are inherently entangled. Cistem Failure is an incredible contribution to destabilizing cisgender normativity and gender itself, as we move toward more liberating ways of existing through gender abolition.”- Kimberly Soriano (TSQ)