Author Origin: St. John's, NL
Page Count: 388
Genre: fiction
Difficulty: medium
Grade Level: 11+
Key Talking Points: racism, the Sri Lankan civil war, the Japanese Internment, morality, the Canadian immigration system
Sensitive Subject Matter: war, violence, graphic medical procedures, death, rape, racsim
Summary: Following three distinct voices from different sides of the narrative, The Boat People tells the story of the immigration system in Canada. Mahindan provides the complex and controversial story of the refugee, fleeing from violent persecution during the Sri Lankan civil war. He and his son are hoping to find a better life in Canada if they are allowed to stay, a decision that is up to the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, while the Immigration and Refugee Board are looking for black and white answers, living in a war torn country as a member of the lower class creates lives only in shades of grey. Grace, an adjudicator on the Immigration and Refugee Board, also tells part of the story. She is a new hire into this position and doesn't have a background in the law, so she relies most on her own gut feelings to make her decisions, although those feelings are tainted by political alliances and personal history. Although, surprisingly, she seems blind to her most relevant connection to the situation, stubbornly refusing to believe that the Internment of Japanese Canadians that so impacted her family's past has anything in common with the current treatment of the "boat people". Finally, Priya is also new to her position and finds herself wrong footed within the swirling complexities of the immigration system. She is a law student who was initially working in corporate law, but because of her Tamil background, was moved to immigration law to work with an experienced lawyer on the cases of five "boat people." Her unfamiliarity with the law offers the reader an opportunity to learn along with her some of the finer details of the broken system.
The characterization in this book is wonderfully complicated. Characters that seems like "the good guys" are slowly uncovered to have made bad decisions that make us question our allegiances to them, while the characters that at first seem clearly to be "the bad guys" are often softened over time to allow the reader to empathize with them more than would have been initially expected.
Teacher Note: This book offers many interesting avenues for study. Morality in general is a motif that is explored in a variety of ways; the reader can look at the personal morality of each of the characters held up against the institutional morality of the immigration system. The book contains a lot of references to history: in Canada during the Japanese Internment of WWII and in Sri Lanka during the civil war. Students would benefit greatly from having some background knowledge of these events and locations while reading, perhaps through a companion research assignment. Students could also research the Immigration system and the laws at the heart of the story. With all of the other social issues associated with civil war and the discrimination faced by the "boat people", both in Canada and Sri Lanka, an exploration of social justice or a persuasive essay to defend or critique a character's choices could also be a great way to have students interact with the text. As stated above though, there are some very emotional and graphic scenes, and so the book is best suited for a senior grade.
Final Thought: Books like this are maddening because of their intricacies and controversial characters, but are also so much more impactful for the same reason. As humans, we are neither always good, nor always bad, and this novel explores how our decisions, whether for right or wrong, have unexpected consequences and ripple effects for us and for those around us.
Also, for those of you that have read it already... that ending though. Message me your thoughts. ;)
📚 Ms. CAN Lit
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