Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to the systemic impacts of racism, enslavement, white supremacy, and capitalism, including discussions of labor exploitation, health disparities, and racial violence. It also delves into personal narratives of exhaustion, grief, and trauma.

In her Preface to Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey narrates a personal journey underpinning the inception of the Nap Ministry, an organization that she founded that advocates for the value of rest as a transformative and subversive response to the relentless demands of modern life, particularly for Black women. Hersey’s narrative is rooted in a deeply personal pilgrimage toward rest, not merely as a practice but as a form of resistance and liberation from the systemic oppressions of racism, capitalism, and the ingrained culture of constant productivity.

Hersey begins by asserting the life-saving power of rest, framing it as an intuitive and self-evident truth born from her lived experience, rather than a hypothesis needing external validation. This personal conviction is what led her to prioritize rest amidst the demanding environment of her graduate studies, compounded by financial strains, family illness, and the omnipresent threat of racial violence. Her direct experiences with the “machine-level pace” of society and the cumulative traumas of poverty, exhaustion, racial injustice, and capitalist exploitation catalyzed Hersey’s adoption of rest as a form of resistance (3).