Joyful Marooning: Refusals in Unethical Times

Abstract

This chapter explores Black joy as something more than rest, self-care, or personal resilience. Instead, it asks how joy can become a relational and political act in the midst of institutions that routinely harming. Drawing on maroon histories and Black feminist thinking, the author argues that joy can function as refusal: a way of saying no to systems that demand endurance, gratitude, or representation in exchange for life. Through short narratives and reflection, this chapter traces three forms of joy—refusal, solidarity, and opacity—that resist capture by institutions and expectations. These forms of joy are not always calm or comforting; they are often risky, relational, and misunderstood. This chapter reframes Black joy as a maroon practice: a way of living and relating that refuses the terms under which freedom is offered and insists on something more collective, alive, and uncontainable.