Colored People Time

A celebration of tardiness through funny, revealing, and deeply thoughtful essays on the nature of time and collective memory

In Colored People Time, Manny Fidel explores how race, culture, and history shape not only our lives, but our sense of time itself. Through sharp, personal, and often humorous essays, Fidel interrogates the politics of punctuality, the myth of linear progress, and some of the ways people of color are forced to navigate a world that rarely moves at their pace or in their favor.

In this collection of essays, Fidel confronts the systems that structure time around identity and power and invites readers to interrogate the way time folds around them, jovially arguing that until America reaches genuine racial equity, people of color should be encouraged to be late to anything they want. Since our country’s inception, the gears that operate it have been oiled to privilege some over others, and the result is that they have fewer barriers to timeliness. For Black and brown people, any number of offenses—grave, minor, or pettily imagined—can gum us up. Fidel argues we deserve the extra time to ourselves. And not for nothing, race relations in the US—by design—are advancing in their own molasses-like pace, ever shifting the ETAs of justice and freedom. Fidel incisively builds this argument in essays like “Summer ‘16,” a nostalgic exploration of a dearly-held season, and “Ocarina of Time,” a meditation on near-death and time travel via video game.

Infused with insights from history, pop culture, and Fidel’s own personal experiences, Colored People Time is not just about lateness. It’s about how time works differently depending on who you are and where you stand.