In ‘Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto,’ Tricia Hersey Makes a Powerful Case Against Hustle Culture

To look at most television commercials and subway ads, you’d think that human beings were designed to do nothing but work (and occasionally order Seamless). Much has been written about the rise of hustle culture, but in her new book Rest Is Relaxation: A Manifesto, author and Nap Ministry creator Tricia Hersey frames things a bit differently.

Hersey makes the point that a go-go-go approach to working can easily veer into toxicity—opting instead to uphold rest as a vital, potentially freeing, and politically energizing activity for all. In a culture that often seems obsessed with output, Hersey is more focused on the inner calm and self-knowledge that can come with proper rest—by which she means “naps, sleep, slowing down and leisure in a capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal world”—and on investigating who has traditionally been denied that rest and its myriad benefits. Recently, Vogue spoke to Hersey about extolling the virtues of rest through a lens of Blackness, writing and parenting during COVID, and the importance of slowing down. Read the full interview below.

Vogue: How does it feel to be less than a week out from your book’s release date?

Tricia Hersey: I’m ready for it to be out on the shelves so that people can engage with it, and it can have its own life. I want it to be studied, given as a gift, or just have people sit with it so they can have an experience with the idea of rest and resistance and have a companion and collaborator with them on their rest journey.

Was there a time in your life when you felt like getting better rest would have made a big difference?

When I began to experiment with rest and the whole idea of the Nap Ministry, really. I started divinity school in 2013, and the pace of it was so fast and there was so much going on, I began to just lay down; I was stressed, I was exhausted, I was overwhelmed with the workload and with other things in my life. Resting became an experimentation for me, to try to save my life from these feelings of exhaustion and disconnection. 2013 is when I decided that I was no longer going to align myself with society’s pace, and I was just going to slow down my life and let the chips fall where they may.