They Said This Would Be Fun
Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up
(Sprache: Englisch)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction
Nominated for the Evergreen Award
A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.
A...
Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction
Nominated for the Evergreen Award
A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.
A...
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NATIONAL BESTSELLERWinner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction
Nominated for the Evergreen Award
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.
Lese-Probe zu „They Said This Would Be Fun “
IntroductionAs I launched out the window of an inflatable bouncy castle, into the warm autumn air and then the mud below, the only thought undiluted by copious amounts of alcohol was: This is what freedom feels like.
It was Saturday, the last night of Orientation Week, and hundreds of first-years were coming together to celebrate on University College Hill, a giant grassy quad on campus. Western University was known for having the most epic frosh week in Canada, especially on the last night, when a B-list Canadian band always played. This year, it was Down With Webster. Sex with Sue, the infamous old lady who we watched after-hours on tv while our parents slept, would show us how to put on condoms, and loud music would play all night alongside carnival games, corporate sponsors and their free grub, and bouncy castles.
A week ago, I had been sobbing in the basement of the house where I grew up, clutching my high school boyfriend s tear- and snot-stained shirt and cursing myself for thinking I could handle moving away from home. I cried the whole way to London, past the small cities I had never heard of and the luscious Green Belt. I cried as I walked up to my new room in Medway-Sydenham Hall and looked at the small space, crammed with two twin beds and two desks, that my best friend Taz and I would be sharing. I cried as I unpacked boxes, as I put my mattress protector on, as I wiped down empty drawers, as I unloaded my underwear from the vacuum-sealed bag and folded them neatly. I cried as I closed the drawer. I cried when I realized there were no other brown-skinned girls on our floor besides us. I cried so much that my floormates and their parents were calling me the crying girl.
The welcome package had given us tips on how to pack, but it didn t specify how much we needed to bring. My family didn t know either I was the first and only one to go to a Canadian university so I brought every bra I owned, every spare sock, pair of shoes, and
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picture frame from my bedroom. It took twice as many sophs, the volunteer students who help first-years adjust to student life, to haul my stuff up to the third floor and make it fit into the shared fifteen-by-twelve-foot space. At one point, they lost the bag full of my pants and I was inconsolable, thinking that I d have to walk around pantless because nobody would sell fashionable bottoms in a place nicknamed Forest City.
When I had told people back home that I was going to Western in the fall, they had similar comments: It s the best school. It s a party school. It s a white school why would you go there? Their eyes widened and they d lean in, whispering as if they were afraid of someone hearing, and say that London was notoriously white, Christian, and conservative. They told me cautionary tales of family and friends transferring out of the school after years of microaggressions and racial harassment on and off campus. Don t worry though, they d say with a smile. You ll have fun.
It had never occurred to me that other cities in Ontario wouldn t be as welcoming as the one where I d grown up. In Toronto, there was always a mix of various ethnicities Chinese, German, Filipino, Trinidadian, Somali, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Jamaican, Guyanese. You can find numerous types of cuisine, schools, and places of worship on any given block. All around, people look like you and look unlike you and it s nothing to fuss about.
But listening to people s concerns, it was like I had chosen the Alabama of Canada to spend the next few years of my life in. It wasn t that my hometown was exempt from racism I knew which department stores would send their white employees following after me like a criminal, and I understood the intentions of the pol
When I had told people back home that I was going to Western in the fall, they had similar comments: It s the best school. It s a party school. It s a white school why would you go there? Their eyes widened and they d lean in, whispering as if they were afraid of someone hearing, and say that London was notoriously white, Christian, and conservative. They told me cautionary tales of family and friends transferring out of the school after years of microaggressions and racial harassment on and off campus. Don t worry though, they d say with a smile. You ll have fun.
It had never occurred to me that other cities in Ontario wouldn t be as welcoming as the one where I d grown up. In Toronto, there was always a mix of various ethnicities Chinese, German, Filipino, Trinidadian, Somali, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Jamaican, Guyanese. You can find numerous types of cuisine, schools, and places of worship on any given block. All around, people look like you and look unlike you and it s nothing to fuss about.
But listening to people s concerns, it was like I had chosen the Alabama of Canada to spend the next few years of my life in. It wasn t that my hometown was exempt from racism I knew which department stores would send their white employees following after me like a criminal, and I understood the intentions of the pol
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Autoren-Porträt von Eternity Martis
ETERNITY MARTIS is an award-winning Toronto-based journalist. She was a 2017 National Magazine Awards finalist for Best New Writer and the 2018 winner of the Canadian Online Publishing Awards for Best Investigative Article. Her work has appeared in Vice, Huffington Post, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt, The Fader, Salon, and on academic syllabuses around the world. Her work on race and language has influenced media style guide changes across the country. She is the course developer and instructor of Reporting On Race: The Black Community in the Media at Ryerson University, the first of its kind in Canada, and the 2021 Journalist-in-Residence at the University of British Columbia. She earned an honours BA and a Certificate in Writing from Western University and an MJ from Ryerson University. She is also a winner of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women by Women's Executive Network.Her debut memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun, is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun bestseller. It's featured on anticipated and essential book lists including Now, the Globe and Mail, BlogTO, CBC, Chatelaine and more. CBC has named Eternity one of "Six Canadian writers of Black heritage to watch in 2020" and the book as one of "20 moving Canadian memoirs to read right now." PopSugar named it one of "5 Books About Race on College Campuses Every Student Should Read" and it is one of Chapters/Indigo's "Best Books of 2020." The audiobook has been named "Best Audiobooks Of 2020" by Apple and Audible. Recently, it became a finalist for the International Book Awards in the categories of Autobiography/Memoir and Social Change.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Eternity Martis
- 2021, 256 Seiten, Maße: 13,2 x 20,2 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0771062206
- ISBN-13: 9780771062209
- Erscheinungsdatum: 10.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
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
Though They Said This Would Be Fun is Eternity Martis's debut, she is an authority on the pervasive nature of racism on North American university campuses an 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 allies an exhaustive look at the discrimination Black women face in a country too often described as a haven of multiculturalism. Erica Lenti, 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 it s like to be a young
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Black woman studying in the ivory tower. Required reading for all those who are preparing to head to a Canadian university and 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 for an 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, Martis 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
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