Sold by Patricia McCormick

 

 

Sold is a story about Lakshmi, a thirteen year old girl living in Nepal. Although her life is hard, living in poverty on the side of the Himalayan mountain, she for the most part is happy. She goes to school, has a goat for a pet, tends her garden and rice paddy, and dreams of the day that she will marry the boy she was promised to. She loves her mother Ama, adores her baby brother, and is indifferent to her step father who likes to gamble away what little money they have.

 

After a monsoon washes away their rice paddy, the families only source of income, survival becomes increasingly difficult. Lakshmi's stepfather sells her to a stranger from India for 800 rupees. Lakshmi is deceived and told that she will be working as a maid, she happily goes with the stranger because she wants to be able to help her family, in particular her mother and brother. As she travels to her new home, Lakshmi sees a world she never new existed when she was living on her beautiful mountain side in Nepal. Lakshmi has no idea of the horrible future that awaits her at her final destination, Happiness House.

 

Happiness House is anything but happy, it is more a prison for young girls, who are forced to sell themselves to any man that enters. At first Lakshmi refuses her fate, but she endures daily beatings and starvation. When that doesn't break her will, she is drugged, being unable to fight back she is continually raped. Lakshmi  loses her will to fight and finally gives in. "Men come. They crush my bones with their weight. They split me open. Then they disappear. I hurt. I am torn and bleeding where the men have been."

 

I have to admit, when I read the previous passage I was moved to tears. Because it was written in a first-person narrative it made reading it very difficult. You felt Lakshmi's pain and anguish, you take the journey with her and see what she sees.

 

The story of Lakshmi is more than just words on a page, this story forces us to think of things so inconceivable, things that we could never imagine in our worst nightmares. It is my hope that it will also force us to act, to take action and do what needs to be done to stop human trafficking and ultimately end it. Human trafficking (which includes both sex and labor) is slavery. It is estimated that over a million people are trafficked into slavery each year. Although the character of Lakshmi is ficticous, unfortunately her story is not. The purpose of this blog is not only to discuss a book, but to also bring awareness to the issue of human trafficking, to identify it, to discuss what is being done to stop it, and how we as individuals may be able to help.