Questioning the figure of the “feminist killjoy”, this essay explores its negativity, as well as its promise of agency. By framing feminist thought as a critique of happiness, it suggests that the feminist subject should be understood as a “willful subject”. The feminist willfulness is thus understood as the uncertain ground for a collective politics translating individual emotions, the pain or anger felt in the face of injustices. Furthermore, the figure of the willful feminist subject may help understand the ways by which, within feminist spaces, black women have been reduced to their anger and designated as the cause of divisions produced by racism. The position of willfulness is therefore as much a place of political tensions as a place for political claims.