The Black Rest Podcast

Black Rest Episode #7: A Conversation with Dr. Joan Morgan Reflecting on the Black Rest Project

In this episode of the Black Rest Podcast, host Deja Carrington is joined by the esteemed Dr. Joan Morgan, Director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. Together, they delve into the transformative power of rest as a form of resistance and a catalyst for creativity within the global Black community. Dr. Morgan shares her insights on the Black Rest Project, exploring how rest can serve as a revolutionary act that replenishes the mind and body. Tune in to discover how embracing rest can lead to profound personal and societal change.

Black Rest Episode #6: A Conversation with Dr. Deborah Willis on the Black Body at Rest

In this episode of The Black Rest Podcast, Dr. Deborah Willis, a visionary photographer, scholar, and director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture, joins Esther Armah, CEO of the Armah Institute of Emotional Justice to explore the radical, emotional, historical, and deeply personal meanings of Black rest. Together, they trace how a nation built on the backbreaking labor of enslaved Africans shaped Black people's relationship to rest, worth, guilt, and exhaustion. From Otis Redding’s quiet rebellion in “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” to photographs of Black domestic workers simply sitting, breathing, being, Willis redefines rest as an active, necessary space of healing. She shares her own struggles with rest, the guilt she carries, the labor she inherited, and the rare places where her body finally exhales—often 30,000 feet in the air. This episode asks: What does rest feel like in a Black body? Who creates rest for Black women? And how do we imagine a future where Black rest is not an interruption of labor—but a birthright?

Black Rest Episode #5: Dr. Treva B. Lindsey on Rest, Dreaming and Liberation

In this powerful and intimate episode, host Dejha Carrington sits down with Dr. Treva B. Lindsey, a scholar, writer, cultural critic, and co-founder of Black Feminist Night School, to explore why rest is not merely restorative but revolutionary for Black people globally. Dr. Lindsey reflects on her childhood in Washington, DC, where chosen kin, community care, and the freedom to try (and fail) shaped her creative spirit. She opens up about witnessing burnout in her educator parents, navigating elite institutions as “the only one,” and the long unlearning required to embrace rest without guilt. Through stories of writing America, Goddamn during the grief and isolation of 2020, Dr. Lindsey reveals how pleasure, naps, communal connection, and deliberate care became essential to her survival—and key to finding her most authentic voice on the page. Together, Lindsey and Dejha examine rest as a political act, a refusal of extraction, and a condition that makes dreaming possible.

Black Rest Episode #4: James Allister Sprang on Art, Sound, and Finding Rest

On this episode of The Black Rest Podcast, host Dejha Carrington sits down with award-winning artist James Allister Sprang for a rich, sensory conversation about growing up Caribbean American in South Miami, discovering art as a place of calm, and learning to find rest through sound, breath, and presence. The heart of the episode explores Rest Within the Wake, Sprang’s immersive 48-minute musical work composed during a solo trip to an island off the coast of Belize. He talks about learning to scuba dive, discovering that underwater rest requires constant exhalation, and turning those breaths into tones, chords, and eventually an expansive somatic score meant to be experienced lying down, eyes closed, fully tuned inward.

Black Rest Episode #3: Childhood, Education, and the Politics of Ease with Dr. Bettina Love and Khary Lazarre-White

On this episode of The Black Rest Podcast, host Dejha Carrington sits down with two extraordinary guests, Dr. Bettina L. Love and Khary-Lazarre White, to talk about what rest looked like in their childhoods, how they learned it (or didn’t), and how they’re reshaping rest and joy for the next generation.  Together, the three explore the crisis of rest for Black children today, the generational patterns we inherit, and the radical possibility of joy—the kind of joy where whiteness can’t intrude, where spades tables, kitchen music, and big belly laughs become portals to freedom. White and Love reflect on their life’s work in education, justice, and movement-building, and the tension between urgent struggle and the need for stillness.