We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape

A beautifully illustrated ＂modern sacred object＂ of a book--inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets--helping readers escape from grind culture and dehumanizing systems, by the New York Times bestselling author of Rest Is Resistance

Give the gift of rest and escape with this exquisitely designed volume of inspiring writings by Tricia Hersey, powerfully illustrated by award-winning designer George McCalman and featuring a silk ribbon marker.

We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation, and the unattainable call for perfection. The systems will never give us rest. It is something we must create for ourselves and each other.

Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing spiritual practice.

We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations and poetry with storytelling and art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy.

There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!
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Have you ever noticed
when you ask for rest
the body becomes a holy trumpet
the walls come tumbling down?

Tricia Hersey is a multidisciplinary artist, theologian, escape artist and founder of The Nap Ministry. She is the global pioneer and originator of the ＂rest as resistance＂ and ＂rest as reparations＂ frameworks, and collaborates with communities all over the world to create sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold. Tricia’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and liberation theology. She is a Chicago native who believes in daydreaming, porch sitting, and poetry.