Catching up with Eternity Martis: 5-Year Anniversary of Her Debut Memoir
It’s been five years since Eternity Martis, associate professor of Journalism at The Creative School released her debut memoir, They said this would be fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up (external link) .
When the memoir first came out in 2020, Martis spoke with us about her thoughts while writing the book, lessons learned and reflected on her experiences.
We caught up with her in 2025 to see how she looks back on the book, what people have remembered and how her position has changed from being a university student to becoming a professor.
Martis said she finds that the book is still reaching new audiences and catches herself talking with people at least once a day about the memoir.
Martis always thought that the book would do well, “...you can’t take away from the meaning it has, the importance it has for people.”
The following is a Q&A with Martis:
What have people taken away and remembered from the book?
What makes me sad is they seem to remember the hardest parts of the book. So, whether it was intimate partner violence or it was like experiencing microaggressions or very explicit racism, they remember that because they’ve been there.
One thing that I love to hear and hear often is that people remember the interstitials (“The Necessary Survival Guide for Token Students”) and that seems to have stuck with them.
People always comment on how that for them was like this little mini guide for feeling safe at school because it was meant to be funny and it was meant to be kind of tongue-in-cheek in the same way that Black folks use humour in dark times, people remember that.
That was the part of the book that was part of the first draft. Back when I thought the book was meant to be hilarious and funny, and learned really quickly that it wasn't. I refused to get rid of that chapter, so it became the interstitials, and I'm glad it did. It brought levity, but also like a recognition of people's experiences. So that comes up a lot, those chapters being the part where they were like, “oh, somebody gets it,” and we can laugh together even though I'm not physically there.
Having written the book before you became a professor, what do you think you took away from talking about your student perspective to now when you’re a professor, teaching students?
I think about all the time how the harm that was done to me and the harm that was done to my peers, and how I can avoid that for everyone, regardless of their gender identity, their ethnicity, their age.
How do I create a safe space?
Being very intentional with teaching, what I teach, how I teach it, how I communicate with students and the physical space that I have for them so that they know that I am, I'm an ally to them. I'm someone they can come and speak to, not just about their assignments, but if anything else is going on because I didn't have that. I had no idea where to go for anything.
When I was in crisis, I had no idea where to go. But the few times that I did ask, I received a lot of support, and it meant a lot to have even two profs really show that they cared about me. So I tried to kind of replicate that here. In the first week [of class], I take it very seriously [and tell the students], if they experience any kind of racism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, sexism, that they can come and talk to me.
I'm very aware that this period of their lives is so formative, and that if they leave here with a negative experience, it does and it will impact the rest of their life. So it's important for me to make them feel that this is a space they can come and speak to me.
How has academia in Ontario, in Canada changed? What have you noticed since your book launched?
One thing that’s happened is that I got to speak to over 100 universities and colleges in Canada and in high schools, and some in the States. At the university level, they would bring me in to talk to their key players, like the provost for example or student services and student affairs, and we’d talk and brainstorm about, “what do we need to do?”
And one thing that was always said was, there is a no zero-tolerance policy. This zero-tolerance policy for racism doesn’t exist, there’s no actual policy to any school. There’s nothing in place across the board, our policies on gender-based violence are weak. They’re not survivor-informed and a lot of schools didn’t even have intimate partner violence as part of that plan.
Lastly, there's no real place for students to go if you're experiencing racism on campus unless you file a human rights complaint. And I think that’s thanks to people, faculty and staff who really care deeply about this, and to students who refuse to settle for anything less than they deserve, I think there's been massive changes.
At TMU, they started a Black student space for students, that is so cool. I’ve been talking about that for five years, like, we need something like this and there’s a few schools that do that. Some schools now have a form you can fill out if you experience racism on campus, they set you up with the appropriate service.
It took so long to get here, but I also feel like at least those changes were made and even though they just started off, can make a massive impact.
Now, what we can do is make sure that students know those exist, which is a whole other issue post-COVID, when everyone feels disconnected from their campus, from their teachers…but the changes are coming. I think that we should also credit students a lot for those changes.
It’s not long since you were a student yourself, so you can remember what it was like.
We pushed for things and I felt like we were heard, we were listened to and the whole point of writing this book was to send the message that students are adults. We infantilize them, we don’t think about the things that they go through in these formative years. Gender-based violence isn't just for “adults,” students are dealing with it too and they’re most at risk of gender-based violence, housing, employment, all of these things. Students today are facing all kinds of insecurities. So, why do we treat them like children? We should be taking them seriously, when schools listen to what their students want, I think it’s a good sign of more progress.
What are the differences that you’ve noticed in the actions students can take versus professors?
I think students have a lot of power to speak to their profs, to their dean, to the chair about issues, which I had never thought about doing, I didn't know it was an option.
Something in our culture has shifted where there's more openness, there's more lines of communication.
For as a prof, I would say that age and experience changes things, because I'm more able to advocate for myself. I still know that there's so much red tape, there's so much oppression that happens for women of colour in academia. I'm not just trying to advocate for myself, I'm also trying to advocate on behalf of students, because I had that experience not that long ago, and I think that gives me more opportunity to or less fear about saying things need to change, because it's not just for me.
We're all here because of the students. I go into everything with that mindset that it needs to be student-first, but as a faculty member, what can I do to support them? How can I advocate for myself and others?
How has your writing style changed since your debut novel and what have you learned?
I haven't done much creative writing since the book came out because it has been like such a whirlwind. I would say that my editing has gotten a lot better because I was already an editor. My editing is super sharp and I can do a lot less drafts.
I tell my students this, writing a book like that, you need to be 1000 per cent sure, even if you are young, you need to be sure that you can stand by everything you said in that book. That you can go home to your family during Christmas and nobody hates you because you wrote about them in a way that they didn't like.
I always feel that I didn't expect so many people to read it, but when people meet me, they say, “I feel like I know everything about you,” and I'm like, “You actually don't know everything about me. You know what I want you to know.” I think I was generous, but I feel like I didn't break any of my own boundaries. Say as much as you need to for the audience and when it comes to my audience, they were racialized people. I can say very little and they know what I'm talking about.
Is there a specific part about the book that’s really special to you?
I love the Greek tragedy chapter. I actually workshopped that whole chapter at Western. I just started thinking, what can I offer that is refreshing and fun beyond, “sad girl gets into a situationship and it's sad.” Like, what can I do?
I was reading so much Greek tragedy. I love Oedipus Rex, I love Aristotle. And I was like, what if I do it this way? The story matches and that was really fun for me.
Do you have any more tips for people who are looking to write their own book about their life?
If you are writing about yourself, writing is not therapy, you should have a therapist. I think we'd assume that it is therapeutic, and it was therapeutic for me, but I don't think we should ever go into writing as therapy.
If you plan on publishing, it should be something that is universal on some level. A lot of my readers are Black women, but it's okay, because the book is about more than that. It's about family and belonging and identity. So if you're planning on writing about yourself, we should relate to it on some level.
Never use real names in your work.
Those things will have to change or you'll get sued. Once your story is out there, you have no control over how it's perceived and how people see you. I tell students this as well, personal writing, personal essays are so in demand. You get paid very little for it, but your life's on the internet, and so you really need to think about it for a while.
I would never recommend to any student to write about something particularly painful or traumatic without feeling that they fully processed it. It took me about seven years to write about those experiences and when I wrote about them, there was no emotion left, it was just a hindsight experience.
I think writing it when it's raw is great but leave it somewhere. Leave it in your notebook, leave it in your computer, and return to it in several years.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
