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.