Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto is a great follow up read to The 1619 Project. I started following Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry in 2017 on Twitter and later on Instagram. I hope this book is read widely and deeply because it could be life saving. It’s the kind of book that people put on their TBR because it seems like an important book, and then they never read it, or read it years later, or pretend they read it. But really, just read it now. Request it from your library or buy it, read it.

I should note upfront that as a white woman and atheist from the South, my relationship with Tricia Hersey’s manifesto is a little complex. She isn’t really talking to me, and I’m not going to claim the same oppression or generational trauma. When she talks about what was stolen from her ancestors, I am aware that my ancestors enforced that theft. But I would also like to be liberated from capitalism and white supremacy, and Rest is Resistance is an essential piece to doing the work of that liberation.

I would also like to note that while I’m writing this I’m wearing a t-shirt that has text on it reading “I’m fine” and then graphics that make it look like a bite has been taken out of my side. A friend gave it to me because when one of us says “I’m fine” we both laugh because we are not fine. I think most of us are not fine. Why are we living lives where insisting we are fine when we are not is so pervasive there are multiple joke t-shirts? I am tired of not being fine and knowing my friends are also not fine and that it’s a state that will last until we die – probably of not being fine. Long term stress is a killer, poverty is a killer, being an oppressed minority is a killer.

Hersey breaks the book into 4 sections: Rest, Dream, Resist, and Imagine. In each section she describes the ways in which rest, dreaming, resistance and imagination are tools of liberation. Capitalism and white supremacy are not systems that will be overthrown with violence (though they are regularly enforced with violence), but with unlearning. In resting we learn to listen to our bodies and what they need. I love that Hersey deliberately refuses to provide a concise 10 point plan to resistance. She’s offering guided meditations and the tools for us to unlock ourselves.

One of the reasons I am so glad Hersey wrote Rest is Resistance is it documents her process and she grounds her work in the work of other Black thinkers and writers. In doing this she resists the co-option of her work by capitalism (see the commodification of self-care and well, everything) and by white people (see also, Tangerine Jones’ Rage Baking co-opted by Katherine Alford and Kathy Gunst).

Buy the book. Take a nap. Stop calling the cops on Black people sleeping.

Perhaps the most grounded in the COVID-19 pandemic for me, Hersey’s manifesto is a resounding answer to the past two years of relentless work amid a global health crisis. The founder of the Nap Ministry, Hersey rightly argues in favor of the liberating power of rest as an assertion of our most basic humanity. This should be required reading.

I included this title in my summer/fall preview for Book & Film Globe: https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/nine-books-to-escape-with-for-fall/

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

Holy verse with an emphases on selah🖤

Thank you so much to The Nap Bishop-Tricia Hersey, Little, Brown and Company Publishers, and NetGalley!

I’ve already pre-ordered my own hard cover copy and I also cannot wait to listen to the audiobook.

The dangers of rest to the dominant paradigm have been well known for millennia. Centuries ago Aesop and other writers described the story of the “Ant and the Grasshopper” as a cautionary tale. For hundreds of years – strikes and work stoppages have been the primary means of resisting the demands of productivity demanded by Capital. People put down their tools and walked off the job and out the factory doors. Truck drivers block ports with their vehicles. Work stoppage has long been a means of resisting the dehumanizing effects of capitalism.

“Capitalism commodifies whatever it can and doesn’t allow space for us to experience the full spectrum of being human.”

“We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce.”

“Fear and scarcity are a big part of how the culture keeps us bound up in the hamster wheel.”

Tricia Hersey’s new book is part auto-biography, part history book and part sermon, offering us a lens for resistance of the dehumanizing, deleterious effects of capitalism & the cult of “productivity” that is womanist, liberationist and at the same time deeply validating of both the need to disconnect for dreaming & private thoughts and of community.

Hersey makes her keen observations in a style of a song: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro.

She doesn’t need to expand too much on her verses – it’s not novel information for her audience. It’s the repetition and the chorus – the soothing reassurance that “You are not unworthy. The systems are unworthy.”

Deep inside, people know:

“ we didn’t arrive on Earth to be a tool for a capitalist system.” … It is not our divine purpose. […] You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor.”

The effects of this fatigue remove community and intellectual agency – turning us into machines:

“When you are exhausted, you lack clarity and the ability to see deeply. Your intuition and imagination are stifled by a culture of overworking and disconnection."

“[…] stealing your imagination and time, grind culture has stolen the ability for pleasure, hobbies, leisure, and experimentation.”
Black liberation and womanism are woven throughout the book – her message that “Black liberation is human liberation” is strong and consistent. The goal of capitalism and white supremacy is to strip away the humanity – it’s essentially reductionist and isolating.

“Black liberation is a balm for all humanity and this message is for all those suffering from the ways of white supremacy and capitalism.”

If you are reading this book and feel that the topics of white supremacy and black liberation are a bit heavy – you have a lot more work to do before you can well and truly appreciate what is being communicated in this book.

The goal of this work is to decolonize your mind and enable a culture shift. If your reaction to creating a nap practice, making time for day dreaming or resting as resistance is to immediately think of slackers, freeloaders and laziness – you’re falling into racist stereotypes as well as white supremacist programming.

“We have been bamboozled. This is why it’s so critical that we create systems of care to help people dismantle and decolonize their minds.”

“We are resting not to do more and to come back stronger and more productive for a capitalist system.”

The loudest chorus in this book is that you don’t have to always be “productive” – and that busyness reduces your ability to heal, dream and tap into your imagination. Even Hersey’s grandmother would rest with her eyes closed and reminded her granddaughter that every shut eye was not asleep. We close our eyes to reduce distraction and focus inward on our own experience whether it’s breathing in meditation or processing feelings or enjoying the fragrance of a flower (to name a few).

- “Resting is not a state of inactivity or a waste of time. Rest is a generative space.”

- “Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent, and heal.”

- “Rest is not a luxury, privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out.”

- “Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us.”

- “Your bodies don’t belong to capitalism, to white supremacy, or to the patriarchy.”

Social media is another area covered by various choruses throughout the book. Just as a reminder: where anything is “free” – you are the product. Hersey rightly points out that social media is a marketing tool and an extension of capitalism. “The goal is to keep you scrolling long enough that you become a consumer. The goal is for you to buy, buy some more, and stay on as long as possible until that happens.” Social media “is a space of dependency” and “robbing us of the archives and memory. Taking from us the ability to go to the past for guidance, motivation, and grounding.”

Hersey highlights the disruptive nature of social media and how it has absorbed “our quiet time” – and urges us to “detox intentionally and often if we are to find rest.”

Our challenge is to “spiritually disconnect from the shenanigans of grind culture while physically still living in it.” Establish healthy boundaries, resist responding right away to email or social media. Reject urgency.

“You cannot achieve deep rest in a consistent way if we don’t detox regularly from social media and the internet. Technology is not built to support our rest or make space for our rest.”

Finally – you have to accept that you have been brainwashed. You have been swimming in a pool of the dominant paradigm for so long, there’s no way it could be any other way. The repetition in this book serves a purpose – to begin unspooling the cocoon that has been limiting us for so long so that we can claim our birthright.

We are enough just as we are – we are enough because we exist. We do not have to be productive, busy or constantly contributing. There is no quick fix – dismantling millennia old mindsets and building communities of care takes time.

“Our interconnectedness is a form of resistance in times thriving against the dehumanizing ways capitalism and white supremacy sees the world.”

“We will not heal alone. We will not thrive alone. Communal care is our saving grace and our communion. Community care will save us. It is already saving us.”

Hersey offers some places to begin:
- Intentionally and regularly detox from social media
- Learn boundaries – “heal the individual trauma you have experienced that makes it difficult for you to say no”
- Establish a “daily practice in daydreaming”
- “Slow down”
- “Listen more”
- “Create systems of community care”


Print out this quote and stick it up in your environment in a half dozen places:

“I deserve to rest now. 2. I am worthy of rest. 3. I am not lazy. How could I be lazy? My Ancestors are too brilliant for that. 4. Capitalism wants my body to be a machine. I am not a machine. 5. I am a magical and divine human being. 6. I have the right to resist grind culture. 7. I don’t have to earn rest. 8. Do less, watch how I thrive. 9. Ease is my birthright. 10. I Will Rest!”

“You don’t have to wait on permission from the dominant culture.”

“Grind culture is violence. Resist participating in it.”

A beautiful and well-written musing on the ways rest isn’t a luxury but is instead a way for us to fight back against a system that seeks to use our bodies as capital. Concrete advise gives readers ideas on how to begin the process of relaxing and taking control of their own rest.

Really necessary, engaging, and exciting ideas about how rest has been withheld from us--and why--and how purposefully seeking it out can be radical.

While I don't tend to be a big believer in 'fate', this book might change my mind. I have been struggling immensely for a while now, trying to find my balance with disability and a lifelong trauma response that tells me I am worthless unless I participate in the grind. I was incredibly fortunate enough to get an ARC via NetGalley to read and review, and wow, this book will leave you in tears in all the right ways.

Rest is Resistance is a book that reminds us that we are worthy of rest, of self care, of prioritizing ourselves - even when society tells us otherwise. Tricia Hersey writes passionately, and intimately, with her viewpoint as a Black woman who has struggled and faced the grind, and decided to prioritize rest even when the world said not to. This book does talk heavily about the effect of capitalism and white supremacy on our Western society, but Tricia makes the very true point that white supremacy doesn't only affect BIPOC people, but it also harms white people. We shouldn't have to make it about ourselves to care, but the truth is that "No one is truly free, until we are ALL FREE", as Tricia quotes. We cannot be free until those who are fighting the hardest fights are able to rest as well.

Growing up in traumatic circumstances often lends a trauma response of constant grinding. If you have grown up not knowing if you'd have a roof over your head (or not having one at all), not knowing what you'll have to eat, and other basic human needs - you grow up feeling the constant need to fight and prove yourself, and protect yourself. You are always 'on', and when you cannot be 'on', there is the constant guilt and fear of failure. With my disabilities pushing harder every day, I have been fighting that battle, and feeling like I wasn't 'enough'. Constantly feeling guilty when I am forced to lay down, or my body will go down without my consent.

This book tells you, over and over again - you ARE worthy. You could do nothing but lay in bed for months on end, and your value would not decrease. As human beings, our value does not rotate around what we can provide to others, what money we can earn, and how many hours we can work a day. But, a capitalist society keeps trying to tell us that. And, it harms so many people. Tricia understands the fear of feeling like if you stop grinding, you'll have nothing. She does not write from a position of privilege, but from one of having lived in the proverbial trenches.

At the core, this book really represents the message of what The Nap Ministry stands for. It feels like a supportive embrace, and a reminder to those of us fighting to love ourselves - that we are worthy. That our broken society does not own our bodies, our mind, our hearts and our focus.

As any transformative book will, this has elements that some people might find uncomfortable. A lot of white people will be uncomfortable with the discussion about white supremacy, a focus on Black liberation and discussing history from enslaved people. But, when a book pushes you into discomfort, it is an opportunity to learn more, and do better. There are also a lot of very valid points about social media and how it ties into capitalism. Technology is vital for many reasons, but we also want to remain in control of it, and not let social media control us.

This is definitely a book I will purchase and read again, when I need a reminder that I am not alone in seeking rest, balance and knowing my worth.