They Said This Would Be Fun
Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up
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They Said This Would Be Fun
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Narrated by:
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Eternity Martis
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By:
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Eternity Martis
About this listen
National Best Seller
A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly White campus.
A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality.
Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by White students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and was tokenized by her romantic partners. She heard racial slurs in bars, on the street, and during lectures. And she gathered labels she never asked for: abuse survivor. Token. Bad feminist. But, by graduation, she found an unshakeable sense of self - and a support network of other women of colour.
Using her award-winning reporting skills, Eternity connects her own experience to the systemic issues plaguing students today. It's a memoir of pain, but also resilience.
©2020 Eternity Martis (P)2020 McClelland & StewartListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"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 it's like to finally find your people." (Hannah Sung)
"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)
"I'm angry to hear that Canadian universities are still ignoring and isolating young racialized women, decades after my own experiences there. But I'm very glad that Eternity's brave, honest, and funny book will be there for students of the future - as well as for institutions whose leaders have the courage and decency to change." (Denise Balkissoon, executive editor, Chatelaine)