They Said This Would Be Fun

Eternity Martis left the multicultural streets of Toronto to attend the mostly white Western University and encounters the usual litany of micro-aggressions and racially motivated hostility. A bi-racial woman by way of an absent Jamaican father and a Pakistani mother, she is still perceived by the world as black. Despite growing up on curry, keema and nihari she is still expected to weigh in on behalf of Black people when slavery is brought up in class, is tokenized by men looking to go black, calling her Ebony, Ma or Chocolate, looked to for a pass to say the n-word from friends, endure blackface Halloween costumes, repel constant hair-touching requests and even face numerous incidents of outright hostility and a very real threat of violence.

And hell, that would have been meaty enough for this debut memoir but the title tag mentions race, campus life and growing up. There is her candid and unflinching look at her time as a victim of intimate partner violence. How despite lecturing younger girls about dating violence and recognizing red flags she finds herself blind to those same warning signs. That even as her abuser moved on, she still found herself wanting to reach out and connect again. And then to making the same mistakes with subsequent boyfriends, once again missing the clear signals.

It's an examination of rape culture still prevalent at university, of waving off indiscretions with a “boys will be boys” and dismissing bad behaviour as just “being dumb”. The staggering figure that 1 in 5 women will experience some form of sexual assault while at university. That women under 25 experience the highest rate of sexual violence in Canada. That up to 50% of students across Canadian universities claim no one has ever educated them on how to report a sexual assault.

It's also about how friends can find themselves drifting apart as each seeks to find their own path. How your goals and vision of the future you dream for yourself can change as you progress through the years of post-secondary life. This isn't just a memoir, this is deeply personal, long-form reportage from the trenches of Canadian academia right now and an examination of university as a crucible for immense change and growth.