Time Come

Linton Kwesi Johnson is best known as a poet, but he has also spent decades as a political and cultural campaigner and social critic, producing a steady body of nonfiction. This book gathers, for the first time, a selection of his strongest prose: reviews of books and records that first appeared in newspapers and magazines, along with lectures, obituaries and speeches.

The pieces were written over many years and draw on Johnson's Jamaican roots and the history of the Caribbean to examine how race continues to shape Black British life. Music runs throughout the collection, from its role in Caribbean and Black British culture as a creative, defiant answer to oppression to his sharp assessments of songs, albums and literature.

Johnson also pays tribute to the activists and artists whose work helped him find his voice as a poet and drew him into the fight for racial equality and social justice. Leaning toward memoir at points, the book offers a wide view of one life and its place in Britain's cultural history. It opens with an introduction by Paul Gilroy.