Volume 4, Resources 4: Better Version of the Anti-racism Resource Guide & Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
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Hi friends. All my personal updates that I have right now are downers so I’m going to jump right into resource week!
Resource #1: Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey (Bookshop | Amazon | Libro | Hear me talk about it)
Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry and she wants us all to rest. She believes that liberation does not come from exhaustion; that burnout is not our path to freedom. Much of Tricia Hersey’s movement is rooted in capitalism’s tie to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Enslaved Africans and eventually enslaved Black people were not allowed to rest much less have leisure, to daydream, or to imagine a better future.
This ministry is the antithesis of productivity and the opposite of grind culture. Hersey doesn’t want us to hustle. She wants us to lie down and to divest completely from productivity culture, capitalism, and the addictive machine that is social media. Rest is Resistance is not only about avoiding the urge to fill every moment with productivity, but also having rest for rest’s sake. That is the part that utterly blew my mind: to rest without the goal of then having more energy to do more. Not resting to fill your empty cup to just pour yourself out again for other people. The author wants you to break the cup. Just naps and daydreams and not taking part in the attention economy.
Hersey makes it very clear that rest is not a privilege and it is not something to be earned. We all deserve rest by merely existing. She addresses the folks who are saying “If I rest then I can’t pay the bills and feed my family.” She’s been there. In fact, that is where she was when she began the Nap Ministry.
After the preface and introduction, the book is broken into four main parts and each is a call to action: Rest, Dream, Resist, and Imagine.
This is an absolutely phenomenal book and if you think it’s not for you because you’re not Black, I promise, it’s for you. If you are living under capitalism, if you are on social media, if you are tired not only physically but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually tired, this book is for you
Resource #2: Anti-racism Resource Guide via Tasha K
In Volume 4, Resources 3 I shared Tasha K’s Anti-racism Resource Guide in the form of a Google Doc; since then I discovered that it is actually available as a website and I want to share that as well.
That’s it for this week! You can shop any books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481. If you are a subscriber and would like for me to send you some happy mail, feel free to give me your address.
If you enjoy this newsletter, here are ways to show your support for my writing and resource curation (other than spreading the word, of course!):
That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
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