Eternity Martis Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Eternity Martis
Eternity Martis is an award-winning Toronto-based journalist. She won the Canadian Online Publishing Awards for Best Investigative Article in 2018, and was a National Magazine Awards finalist for Best New Writer in 2017.

Her memoir was named one of Indigo’s “Best Books of 2020 and was an Apple and Audible selection for one of the Best Audiobooks of 2020.x

Her work has appeared in CBC, Salon, Vice, Huffington Post, The Walrus, The Fader, Hazlitt, and on academic syllabuses around the world.

Eternity specializes in personal journalism, longform and feature writing, and covers gender and gender-based violence, relationships, health and reproductive rights, race and racial injustice, and identity politics.

Eternity’s work on language and race has influenced media style guide changes all over the country. She is the course instructor and developer of Reporting on Race: The Black Community in the Media at Ryerson University, which is the first of its kind in Canada. She is also an adjunct professor in the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at UBC and the 2021 Journalist-in-Residence at UBC.

She earned an honors BA and a Certificate in Writing from Western University. She also has an MJ from Ryerson University. In the year 2020, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by Women’s Executive Network.

Eternity wrote the book off and on for a total of ten years. When she moved to London, Ontario, she almost immediately began experiencing ignorant and subtle racism that she hadn’t ever experienced before. She would go back home and tell her family and friends, who responded with disbelief or shock. Eternity decided to start writing this all down when the behavior in London began becoming more malicious and people back home started listening to her less.

She would keep track of people that would tell her she was funny, for a black person. Or if they made comments about her hair. She would write them down on pieces of paper, thinking she could put them in a blog. This did not feel quite right so then she attempted to write a play during her third year, which also didn’t feel right. Then in her fourth year at Western she was working toward a certificate in writing and the end of the course was a major project, and decided to write up a book proposal.

Then she went to Ryerson University in Toronto to work on her masters in journalism. She loves journalism, however she wanted to write books and wanted to write this memoir. It was through her Ryerson connections that she was able to meet her editor.

As she was writing her memoir, she did not expect she would be so affected by writing about this time in her life. She believed that writing about her life would just be an easy feat. She was not ready for the emotions that came with reliving certain things. In writing this, she realized that there were a lot of things that she had not dealt with and emotions that occurred while she was a student, and the things that she went through were actually rather traumatic and might explain quite a bit about who she is today.

Like how angry and untrusting she was by the time she graduated from Western, and she has carried this with her into adulthood. She realized, through writing this book, where much of this comes from, and she has been able to work through it now. Writing the memoir has been hugely therapeutic, and feels like she is in a much better place for it.

For her own wellness, Eternity likes to write each day. But since she also has a full-time job, she wakes up at about five or six, get an hour of writing down, go to work, and write some more while on her lunch break. Then go to the gym. After that, she would write from nine to twelve in the morning. This was her endless cycle for about eighteen months.

She had an overwhelming urge to get this book out into the world so that others could read it. There are a lot of things in this book that feel almost universal to students of color. Eternity felt like she just had to do it. She has wanted it for so long now. She wanted to be a writer since she was just eight years old.

“They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up” is Eternity’s memoir that was released in the year 2020. Eternity Martis, a booksmart kid from Toronto, was excited to move away and attend Western University for her undergraduate degree. But being one of the few Black students in attendance, she quickly found that the campus experiences she had seen in movies were much more complex in reality.

Over the next four years, she learned more about what somebody like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. Eternity was confronted by white students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the one and only person of color in her classes and was tokenized by her romantic partners.

She would hear racial slurs on the street, during lectures, and out on the street. She also gathered labels that she never once asked for. Bad feminist. Abuse survivor. Token. By graduation, however, she discovered an unshakable sense of self, as well as a support network of other ladies of color.

Eternity uses her award-winning reporter skills, Eternity links her own experience to the systemic issues plaguing students today. It is a moving, relevant, and powerful memoir about pain, but also resilience. As she discusses her experience with racism and othering at the school, she delves into the complicated issues of being female at these institutions and the impact this will have on our well-being and confidence. She shares stories about rape culture, racism, and sexual assault, which can make for tough reading at times, and made some readers’ hearts ache. Fans want to thank Eternity just for writing this book, and for sharing a few of her stories with the world.