Eternity Martis - They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up

Im angry to hear that Canadian universities are still ignoring and isolating young racialized women, decades after my own experiences there. But Im very glad that Eternitys brave, honest, and funny book will be there for students of the futureas well as for institutions whose leaders have the courage and decency to change.

Denise Balkissoon, Executive Editor, Chatelaine

With fierce intelligence and flashes of humour, Eternity Martis exposes racism and sexism on contemporary university campuses through her personal story of coming of age as a young Black woman at a predominantly white school. A deeply felt memoir about resistance, resilience, and the life-saving power of finding your own voice.

Rachel Giese, author of Boys: What It Means to Become a Man, winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

In her debut memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun, Eternity Martis maps out the very real ways that structural violence permeates the lives of young Black women in predominantly white schools in Canada. Her writing is both candid and alluring and perfectly delineates how race, gender, and sexuality are all intertwined in everyday events of university life. This book is an urgent read for all educators and education administrators, those who are considering university and college life in Canada, alongside young Black and racialized women who are looking to be seen.

Huda Hassan, writer and researcher

Though They Said This Would Be Fun is Eternity Martiss debut, she is an authority on the pervasive nature of racism on North American university campusesan oft-overlooked issue kept hush among so-called polite Canadians. They Said This Would Be Fun is not an easy read, nor is it always comfortable. But it is an essential book for alliesan exhaustive look at the discrimination Black women face in a country too often described as a haven of multiculturalism.

Erica Lenti, Senior Editor, Xtra

Too many stories about the experience of racism on Canadian campuses remain buried, because of fear of reprisal or retaliation. With this spellbinding and important memoir, Eternity Martis offers us a clear-eyed, eloquent, and no holds-barred portrayal of what its like to be a young Black woman studying in the ivory tower. Required reading for all those who are preparing to head to a Canadian universityand to those who head them up. I plan to buy it in bulk to hand out at my school. Unwaveringly unapologetic, richly written, and powerfully conveyed, Martis offers us the book that scholars, students, and university administrators have been waiting foran unflinching look at racism on Canadian campuses. Following in the footsteps of writers like Roxane Gay and Scaachi Koul, but steadfastly providing her own distinctive voice, Martiss book is at times shocking, powerful, surprisingly funny, and most of all provides a seamless link between theoretical approaches to race and how it plays out in practice.

Minelle Mahtani, Associate Professor, Department of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, and Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, University of British Columbia

University is a time of major personal growth and excitement but also systemic, baked-in discrimination and inequity. This book is for anyone who is still making sense of it all but especially for those who need communion with a beautifully-written account of what its like to finally find your people.

Hannah Sung, journalist

Copyright 2020 by Eternity Martis

Hardcover edition published 2020

McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisheror, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-0-7710-6218-6

ebook ISBN: 978-0-7710-6219-3

Excerpt from bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992) reprinted with permission from Between the Lines.

Excerpt from The Uses of Anger from Sister Outsider, Crossing Press/Penguin Random House, Copyright 1984, 2007 by Audre Lorde.

Excerpt from for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange. Copyright 1975, 1976, 1977, 2010 by Ntozake Shange. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover art and book design by Kelly Hill

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