A celebration of tardiness through funny, revealing, and deeply thoughtful essays on the nature of time and collective memory, and a jovial argument that until America reaches genuine racial equity, people of color can be late to anything they want.

Since the dawn of time, punctuality has been a scam. You rush to get ready for an event, only to discover that your pants have a hole in them, there’s a chance of rain, and the train is skipping your stop, so now the fastest method is a $100 rideshare to go 2 miles. And for what? To arrive “on time” rather than “whenever I want”? Enough is enough.

In Colored People Time, Manny Fidel bravely confronts this injustice head-on, arguing that until America reaches genuine racial equity, people of color are allowed—nay, 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, or “Ocarina of Time,” a meditation on near-death and time travel via video game.

Colored People Time addresses and diffuses the tension of lateness in a new context informed by history, pop culture, and social camaraderie. It reminds readers that they are not alone in a world that is, in some ways, moving fast, and in more familiar ways, taking its sweet time.