THE SUNDAY REVIEW | BORDERS – THOMAS KING & NATASHA DONOVAN

I adored this book. It was one of my top reads of last year, and also one of my favourite graphic novels (probably either #1 or #2). This is the story of a young boy and his mother who are Blackfoot and live on a reservation in what we think of as Canada. Our protagonist and his mother are traveling to Salt Lake City to visit his older sister when they are stopped at the border, and when his mother is asked what her citizenship is, she replies firmly with, “Blackfoot.”

So begins a prolonged back and forth over the strip of land that separates the Canadian border crossing from the American one, both on land traditionally belonging to Blackfoot territory.

It’s such a simple story, and yet it manages to quietly capture an entire history, and show the impact of land division and border establishment on the people who already had their own nations and traditional lands – ones which were not taken into account when these maps were drawn. It’s an issue I think many of us haven’t thought much about – our countries are our countries, and their borders are where they have always been in our memory and history books. And yet, this entire long indigenous habitation exists, pre-dating our maps, and those connections to place and family have not been re-drawn by the lines on our modern map.

The brilliance of this book lies in how quietly this issue is circled into the centre of the narrative. If you go into this not knowing what it’s about (as I did – I’d just heard it was good and picked it up) you don’t really know where it’s going until you get there. It doesn’t have any overt conflict or violent climax, it’s simply about a son and about his mother who calmly refuses to acknowledge a citizenship that she does not see as her own.

I loved the characters in this book. They’ve got their own concerns and perspectives, they have separate relationships, and underneath it all they are a family whose bond is stronger than how any map has been drawn around them. I finished this and had to just sit there for a few minutes to absorb it. I want every Canadian and American to read this. I want it to be required reading in high schools. I want this to be discussed and to bring that lightbulb moment to kids who are just starting to understand our history and how it continues to play out down through the centuries to today. It’s such an important story, and told in such a poignant and loving way. The art is also absolutely stunning, and really captures the feel of the events as they progress.

Needless to say, I really hope you’ll pick this one up if you haven’t already read it – even if you don’t normally read graphic novels. It’s an easy one to get into, I promise, and you’ll be glad you gave it a try!

A stunning graphic-novel adaptation based on the work of one of Canada’s most revered and bestselling authors

On a trip to visit his older sister, who has moved away from the family home on the reserve to Salt Lake City, a young boy and his mother are posed a simple question with a not-so-simple answer. Are you Canadian, the border guards ask, or American?

“Blackfoot.”

And when border guards will not accept their citizenship, mother and son wind up trapped in an all-too-real limbo between nations that do not recognize who they are.

A powerful graphic-novel adaptation of one of Thomas King’s most celebrated short stories, Borders explores themes of identity and belonging, and is a poignant depiction of the significance of a nation’s physical borders from an Indigenous perspective. This timeless story is brought to vibrant, piercing life by the singular vision of artist Natasha Donovan. – Goodreads

Book Title: Borders
Author: Thomas King
Illustrator: Natasha Donovan
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Brown Ink/HarperCollins
Released: September 7, 2021
Genre: Graphic Novel, Indigenous, History, Geography
Pages: 192
Date Read: August 30, 2022
Rating: 10/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.95/5 (2,269 ratings)