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?