Standard literary feedback has a tendency to both forget about or downplay the unorthodox culture of black experimental writing that emerged within the wake of protests opposed to colonization and Jim Crow–era segregation. Histories of African American literature likewise have a difficult time accounting for the individuality of experimental writing, that is a part of a common shift in emphasis between black writers clear of appeals for social popularity or elevating attention. In Freedom Time—the moment publication to seem within the Callaloo African Diaspora Series—Anthony Reed deals a theoretical examining of "black experimental writing" that offers the time period either as a profound literary improvement and as an idea for reading how writing demanding situations us to reconsider the relationships among race and literary strategies.

Through prolonged analyses of works via African American and Afro-Caribbean writers—including N. H. Pritchard, Suzan-Lori Parks, NourbeSe Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, Claudia Rankine, Douglas Kearney, Harryette Mullen, and Nathaniel Mackey—Reed develops a brand new experience of the literary politics of officially leading edge writing and the connections among literature and politics because the Sixties.

Freedom Time reclaims the ability of experimental black voices through arguing that, if literature essentially serves the human want for freedom in expression, then readers and critics needs to see it as greater than a trifling mirrored image of the politics of social protest and id formation. With an process proficient via literary, cultural, African American, and feminist reviews, Reed indicates how transforming literary fabrics and conventions liberates writers to push the boundaries of illustration and expression.