Sathyaraj Venkatesan reviews Maureen Burdock’s 2025 comic publication, Sleepless Planet: A Guide to Healing from Insomnia, exploring its role as a graphic narrative in portraying sociocultural dynamics of sleep.
“It is a special kind of homelessness… to be evicted from your dreams.”
Sleep Donation by Karen Russel
Sleepless Planet: A Graphic Guide to Healing from Insomnia By Maureen Burdock is an elemental, dreamlike, and lyrical comic that intricately weaves the visual with the verbal to investigate the fundamental nature of sleep alongside a range of interconnected concerns, ultimately posing the central question: “As a biological being in a mechanized world, how do I rewild myself? How do I reclaim my innate rhythms and optimal health and sleep?” (Burdock, 16). While it is now widely recognized that the deprivation of natural sleep contributes to chronic illness, cognitive decline, and a range of other health complications, what distinguishes Sleepless Planet is Burdock’s nuanced analysis of the root causes of mass sleeplessness and the diverse pathways toward healing. Read this way, Sleepless Planet is essentially an analytical comic in that it examines the issue of sleep from multiple perspectives, establishing both causal and correlational relationships. In so doing, it positions itself as a critical intervention in contemporary discourses on health, justice, and rest.
Me, you, and sleep
Divided into four major sections titled after the elements— “Air”, “Fire”, “Earth” and “Water”—the first part of Sleepless Planet (“Air”) narrates Burdock’s visit to a sleep therapist who diagnoses her with Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS), a diagnosis that has a profound impact on her. UARS is a sleep disorder where airway resistance disrupts sleep, causing frequent arousals and daytime fatigue. A subsequent home sleep test confirms that she suffers from moderate sleep apnea (a sleep disorder, leading to potential health complications), prompting her to reflect: “WHY do so many of us (close to a billion worldwide, so about one in eight people) struggle to breathe at night? I mean, breathing and sleeping are both things we can’t live without” (Burdock, 34). Although Sleepless Planet is grounded in Burdock’s personal experiences of sleeplessness from childhood through perimenopause, the comics frequently expand beyond the individual to examine the broader socio-political and historical forces shaping contemporary sleep practices. Put differently, Sleepless Planet foregrounds her experience within a collective struggle, highlighting the widespread nature of sleep deprivation across human and non-human species. As Burdock notes, “I’m far from being the only one dealing with insomnia. Millions of us—more than a quarter of the population—are suffering individually and collectively” (Burdock, 15).
In her quest to identify various causes of sleeplessness, Burdock identifies a constellation of intersecting causes—ranging from intergenerational trauma and systemic oppression to the relentless pace of modernization and the disruption of natural rhythms by artificial light, industrial labour, and capitalist time regimes. Particularly compelling is the role of late capitalism in infiltrating and reshaping the rhythms of sleep, fatigue, and rest. Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer in The Slumbering Masses terms this phenomenon as “somnolent capitalism” (16), referring to the ways contemporary capitalist structures extend into sleep producing somnolent subjects, for whom sleep is no longer merely personal but becomes entangled with structural, economic, and ecological forces. Sleepless Planet navigates these tensions between agency and structure, the individual and the collective, solitude and solidarity emerging as a bold work of graphic medicine. It strategically uses sleep as a conceptual portal to investigate both historical forces and contemporary ideologies shaping the present, while asserting the reclamation of sleep as an act of resistance and self-care.
To this end, the third chapter, titled “Earth”, responds to the question, “How do I reclaim my innate rhythms and optimal health and sleep?” (Burdock, 16). The chapter outlines multiple pathways toward restoring natural sleep rhythms, including digital detoxification, intermittent fasting, and practices inspired by indigenous lifeways (such as Diné) as well as religious and medical systems like Indian Ayurveda that emphasize alignment with circadian and seasonal rhythms. Collectively, these diverse approaches underscore the potential of culturally embedded, holistic practices in restoring the body’s natural rhythms and reclaiming sleep as a vital, embodied form of well-being. This thematic trajectory culminates in the book’s final chapter which lends a philosophical heft and a meditative tone to the entire comic. Invoking the metaphors of river and water (“Be water, my friend”) (Burdock, 190) to encapsulate a philosophy of resilience, openness, and quiet strength, and reimagining sleep as a transition, of letting go, and of enchantment and transformation, Burdock underscores the ethical and ecological importance of cultivating natural sleep (as opposed to substance/medically induced sleep) for rest and healing. The “Sample Sleep Log” (a template that readers can use to record their sleep patterns) and “Sample Dream Journal Pages” (a template to guide readers on how to record their dreams) included toward the end of the book, along with extensive notes and a detailed works cited section, make it even more valuable for readers interested in critical sleep studies, sleep science or those who are seeking to recalibrate their own sleep practices.
Sleep as a sociocultural continuum
Steeped in research and framed as a dialogue between a Koala (known for its extensive sleep) and the author herself, Sleepless Planet features the recurring figure of Koala not merely as a whimsical character, but as a visual metaphor for shifting temporal and emotional states and as an embodiment of restorative sleep that remains elusive for Burdock and countless others. Koalas make an apt metaphor because they sleep/rest up to 18–22 hours a day, making them one of the sleepiest animals in the world. Likewise, the presence of animals/birds/insects (bats, bees, butterflies, etc.) introduces a posthuman dimension to the narrative, expanding the scope of Sleepless Planet beyond the human in order to show how anthropocentric greed and environmental degradation disrupt the sleep rhythms of non-human animals. Simultaneously, it enacts a form of distributive agency granting voice, presence, and narrative space to non-human life forms.
same name by Maureen Burdock
Visually, the comic exhibits a distinct rhythm and fluidity, deliberately resisting the rigid, grid-like structure it critiques in Sleepless Night. Through a skilful juxtaposition of formal elements such as grids, moons, clocks, and industrial machinery against organic imagery such as plants, animals, and stars, Burdock reinforces the ideological tension between imposed systems of order and the more intuitive, cyclical patterns of the natural world. A discerning reader will also identify the recurrent motifs of roots and routes throughout (like Burdock’s Queen of Snails: A Graphic Memoir) which function thematically and visually as potent metaphors for interconnectedness, mutual dependency, and the entangled genealogies that shape personal and collective experience.
That sleep is never purely biological nor a personal matter, but a phenomenon shaped by colonial forces, capitalist modernity and embedded within a broader ecology of living is a key take away of Sleepless Planet. In order to advance this argument, Sleepless Planet foregrounds how diverse factors—ranging from microbes and planetary homeostasis to oil economies and gut health—collectively influence sleep and, by extension, (non)human well-being and hormone health. Ultimately, what defines Sleepless Planet is not only its incisive analysis of mass sleeplessness, but also Burdock’s sustained effort to resist and reclaim sleep as a vital act of preserving humanity, justice, and self-care. The boxed set of illustrated sleep cards, offered as part of the crowdfunding campaign, beautifully extends this intent. These cards provide imaginative ways to engage with, and potentially alleviate, our collective sleeplessness—encouraging a return to natural rhythms governed by the body and the cosmos, in alignment with solar and lunar cycles.
Conclusion
To conclude, by blending sleep science with cultural and historical analysis, while also offering practical tips for those struggling with sleep, Sleepless Planet emerges as a resourceful graphic medical narrative that thoughtfully addresses a range of questions surrounding our complex relationship with sleep. Part graphic nonfiction and part comics diary, Sleepless Planet is a call to “rewild” the self by realigning with natural, circadian rhythms, urging readers to cultivate “night minds” marked by “bodily and mental restoration” (146). Burdock asserts, “The rewilding of our species and the healing of our planet must begin with learning to slow down, consume less, talk less, and quietly observe and listen more” (156). Here the “rewilding” implies a return to more organic, embodied, and ecologically attuned ways of being, one that recognizes sleep as a biological and relational rhythm.
About the author
Sathyaraj Venkatesan is a Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (India). His research concentrates on graphic medicine, comic studies, and American literature. He is the author of nine books and over a hundred research articles that span African American literature, health humanities, graphic medicine, film studies, and other literary and cultural studies disciplines. His recent co-edited book is Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation (Singapore: Springer, 2022).
References
Burdock, Maureen. Sleepless Planet: A Guide to Healing from Insomnia. PA, The Penn State UP/Graphic Mundi. 2025.
Russell, Karen. Sleep Donation. Vintage Classics. 2020.
Wolf-Meyer, Matthew J. The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
