4 things to read, watch and listen to after you've read The Boat People
The Boat People documents people and families undergoing change in Canada. In it, the arrival of a ship full of Sri Lankan refugees tests the resolve of a father, his son, their lawyer and an adjudicator throughout a long hearing process.
Sharon Bala's novel was defended by singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah on Canada Reads 2018.
Below is a list of stories to read, watch and listen that portray lives undergoing transformation.
Read: The Illegal by Lawrence Hill
Winner of Canada Reads 2016, Lawrence Hill's novel is set in a land that deports its refugees. The novel keeps up with Keita, a runner, as he illegally flees into Freedom Land and hides from its government in the Underground with fellow refugees. Hill turns his attention to the hospitality of individuals in the face of a hostile nation.
Read: A Tale of the Dispossessed by Laura Restrepo
Displacement creates the perfect conditions for a particular kind of romance in Laura Restrepo's novel. A Tale of the Dispossessed chronicles the pilgrimage of a nameless narrator and her love interest, a man called Three Sevens, who searches for the woman responsible for taking him in as a child refugee. Restrepo picks and pulls at this love triangle to examine what war can do to the most basic of emotions.
Watch: Dheepan
A former Tamil Tiger soldier leaves Sri Lanka to begin a new life in France under a false identity and with two women pretending to be his wife and daughter. Jacques Audiard's film traces a character who resists violence, but cannot distance himself from it long enough to rebuild his own identity. The film won the 2015 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Listen: X-amounts by controller.controller
Indie rock band controller.controller disbanded shortly after the release of X-amounts. It's lead singer Nirmala Basnayake, who is Sri Lankan Canadian, covers a range of social and personal subjects on the album, such as the story of a conflicted homecoming on the track Tigers Not Daughters.
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