Sharon Bala’s The Boat People is controversial, to say the least. Featured in the 2018 Canada Reads competition only to be ousted on day one, it takes an honest attempt to steer the course of Canadian conversation by directly addressing one of our hot-button issues of the moment. In this case, the refugee crisis.
Starting in 2009, the book follows a few characters whose lives are changed when a boat carrying 500 Sri Lankan refugees appears off the coast of British Columbia. Mahindan, who is fleeing the civil war with his six-year-old son, becomes the pseudo-protagonist as the story unfolds from the alternating perspectives on his sudden appearance in Canada. After being detained along with the other refugees as potential terrorists, Mahindan is assigned counsel named Priya, a wannabe corporate lawyer sucked into the case by the whims of her bosses, and an adjudicator named Grace, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian navigating her new role in the government. Both Priya and Grace add their own experiences of immigration and identity in Canada to the mix.
The immigrant/refugee identity is explored from multiple angles with the addition of Priya and Grace’s family histories. This background helps unpack the complex topic of The Boat People in a more rigorous way than the average book. As Mozhdah Jamalzadah said on Canada Reads, “It gives the refugee crisis, a human face.” In terms of developing characters and giving voice to the assorted members of Priya and Grace’s families, Bala does an excellent job with a few exceptions. Grace’s mother, Kumi, whose memory is unraveling as she ages represents the Japanese-Canadian experience with internment. Kumi’s character is a strong foil to Grace who just wants to move on from the past, and one of my favourite characters for most of the novel. However, Kumi’s memory becomes more of a plot device as the novel carries on. Somehow she is able to remember key moments of her parent’s internment and her experience as a child, but is also not lucid enough to defend herself or explain to her daughter the emotional trauma she is recalling. Over time, her appearances in the book serve only to remember specific moments for Grace to compare to Mahindan’s case and the character of Kumi quietly dissipates.
Bala keeps to a fairly politically neutral course through the book by including characters who struggle with the moral implications of detaining refugees and are sincerely worried for the security of Canada while being burdened with the responsibility of maintaining that security. On both sides, you see the pitfalls of emotion which move people to take hard stances for or against refugees. However, to me, her greatest victory is in the ending, even though it is not strong writing-wise. It is fairly obvious in the end which side of the argument Bala believes in but without her coming across as being too preachy or patronizing.
The rest of this review contains spoilers (highlight the text to read): On the one hand, she doesn’t wrap the book up with a nice bow but providing a ruling in Mahindan’s case. However, after an entire novel of learning more about Priya and Grace, Bala seems to push through an end that doesn’t match with their established characters. It seems too clean cut for a book that spent much time trying to be anything but. Priya easily gives up on her dream of being a corporate lawyer after essentially being dragged into the case for being the only brown person in the office. If there was any inner turmoil over this, we never get to know it. Meanwhile Grace’s experience with her mother which, as mentioned, started so strong, really just fades out and Grace doesn’t demonstrate any final introspection after her constant struggle with balancing her family history, career expectations, and own moral compass.
As a whole, I greatly enjoyed The Boat People and was easily swept into Mahindan, Priya, and Grace’s stories as ones so similar to many Canadians I know. Bala does a masterful job of challenging the reader and steering you through a complicated topic from an empathetic perspective. The ending may be a bit of a disappointment but the remainder of the novel is well worth the experience of unraveling the fear and sympathy a community faces when confronted with the humanity of others.