They Said This Would Be Fun

From award-winning journalist Eternity Martis, a look at race and gender on campuses, and a personal tale of struggle and survival. The debut memoir from Eternity Martis, They Said This Would Be Fun captures the difficulty of navigating through white spaces as a student of colour. Eternity thought going away to university would help her discover who she really is. Hoping to escape her abusive boyfriend, her nerdy reputation, her doting Pakistani family, and her complicated feelings towards her absent Jamaican father, she heads out to the predominantly white college city of London, Ontario. At school, she discovers an entitled culture of racism and sexism: she encounters blackface at parties, hears racial slurs at the bar, and has teachers ask her permission to discuss race in classrooms where she's the only student of colour. Over the next four years, Eternity navigates her identity in her new surroundings while adjusting to student life: she bounces out the window of an inflatable castle after too much vodka, glares down drugstore cashiers who announce a price check for her pregnancy test for the whole store to hear, and dodges white girls who stroke her hair at parties. And as more and more classmates of colour feel driven out of the university, Eternity decides to stay. In doing so, she starts to uncover what she went away to find in the first place: who she is. They Said This Would Be Fun captures the work students of colour must do to fight for themselves in spaces where they are supposed to be safe to learn and grow.