Tricia Hersey
Author of Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto
Works by Tricia Hersey
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Places of residence
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Education
- Eastern Illinois University (BS|public health)
Candler School of Theology at Emory University (MDiv) - Occupations
- performance artist
writer
activist
theologian - Organizations
- Nap Ministry (founder)
- Short biography
- Tricia has 20 years of experience as a teaching artist, archivist assistant, community activist, and arts-integrated curriculum developer with Chicago Public Schools, Columbia College Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, United States Peace Corps, Emory University Rare Books and Manuscript Library, and numerous community organizations and universities in nationwide.
Hersey has exhibited artworks, delivered talks, and created collective napping experiences with School of the Art Institute Chicago, MOCA Cleveland, Speed Museum, Flux Projects, United States Peace Corps, Google Global, MIT, Brown University, and many more.
Her words and work have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, PlayBoy, Afropunk, The Atlantic, Complex Magazine, Dutch Vogue, NPR All Things Considered, USA Today, Bon Appetit, and others.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Tricia currently lives in South Georgia with her husband, Tommy, and her son who is nicknamed The Dream. [retrieved 6/2/2023 from Website]
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Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Members
- 290
- Popularity
- #80,656
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 8
Hersey is mostly speaking to fellow African-Americans, but what she has to say applies broadly and a lot of the populations, especially those who aren't managers, may find her tackling a very important issue. How much do we belong to ourselves? I have felt under constant pressure most of my life to regard myself as a machine that can be adapted, without stress, to the needs of others. The devotion that we are supposed to owe organizations that consider us to be interchangeable cogs is ridiculous. I owe then what I'm being for, nothing more. I will never get to the top? I'm not trying, and, face it, most people never will get to the top.
Hersey talks a great deal about a longer and longer list of "-isms," ableism, patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and finally, the "ism" that I think is too often over looked, classism, but this is usually just a list without much examination. She associates American slavery with the rise of capitalism, which I think is not entirely true, but the reader might want to have a look at Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, which is summarized in Wikipedia. Williams argued that the wealth generated by slavery fueled the rise of capitalism in the west. I think one could debate definitions of capitalism, and whether that would be better described as the Industrial Revolution, but certainly that created the situation in which most of us live.
It is a situation that has gotten worse during my lifetime - at least before the collapse of the USSR, politicians and other influential people were eager to argue that workers under capitalism actually had better lives than those living in the workers' paradise. Statistically, white middle class people were better off, workers earned salaries that allowed a single wage earner to support a family, benefits and pensions were often better. A lot of people were excluded from this happy picture, and although some groups have made advances, in real dollar terms, wages are stagnant and sometimes have even declined. Wealth inequity has become much more severe. I don't think that Hersey has a real good argument to give to people who say that they can't rest because they have to pay their bills. Hersey notes that she overcame great odds to get where she is today, but it was an enormous struggle, and, "I succeeded, so can everybody else," is not a real good answer. Sometimes luck and chance determine part of the outcome.
I actually prefer the term "grind culture" to capitalism, because I suspect that better expresses the problem of people being treated as little better than work tools, and I suspect that it is very common throughout history. Slavery, according to a history I read, is one of the oldest and most common human institutions. It has contributed its wealth to all sorts of economic systems, as has serfdom, tenant farming, and peonage. The involuntary labor of "lesser beings" is always popular with the upper classes. In Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, the narrator, the house-steward Gabriel Betteredge, says: "People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves -- among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be."
As with so many works, noting the problem works much better than coming up with a solution. Hersey calls for community, an placing a higher value on ourselves, which I have no problem with, but the problem is always controlling the predatory. I always thought that living the American Dream is being able to build a secure life, but to other people. it's amassing enough money and influence to stack the odds in their own favor and seize whatever they can. I think that we have a lot of work to do before we are giving the children of our society what they deserve, but I am not sure that we can guarantee that everyone will be a good person.… (more)