Tracing Akwaeke Emezi's Maps of Black Resistance

Abstract

This article explores how Black literary counternarratives create sustainable resistance in today’s U.S. politics, shaped by far-right and white supremacist rhetoric. Focusing on Akwaeke Emezi’s speculative novels Pet (2019) and Bitter (2022), it argues that Emezi maps a practical ethics of collective liberation by showing how communities imagine beyond oppression, foster joy and connection, use language intentionally, and maintain principled action. Drawing on Ruha Benjamin’s concept of the ‘imaginary’ and Adrienne Maree Brown’s ideas of pleasure activism, the article identifies four strategies: collective imagination, space for joy and connection, intentional language, and enduring ethical commitment, placing them within Black activist storytelling. A close reading of Lucille, the novels’ shared city, demonstrates how Emezi connects utopian possibility to communal care, accountability, and antiviolent practice. Ultimately, Emezi’s fiction shows resistance not just as opposition but also as world-building: reclaiming Black joy, reshaping the political imagination, and offering practical frameworks for freer futures