Book #49: Sold

Book #49: Sold by Patricia McCormick

September 30, 2013


Since this is a book that I needed to have finished for my class on Tuesday, I decided to finish it quickly (it was a quick read) and knock out one more blog post for the month. I feel like I can get back on track with my personal reading. I've decided to maybe take a break from the classics for a while. I was trying to do one classic, one contemporary, but as soon as I considered shelving the classics (I guess literally, though they're all on my Kindle) for now, I started to get excited again about the next book that I will read. Well, the point of this whole excursion is to keep me reading consistently, and I always feel so much better when I do. I'll keep my lists handy, but I think I'll just let my mood (and my class reading list) drive my choices.

Anyway, even though this was an assigned text, it's one I've been meaning to read. A student at my first teaching assignment recommended it, so I was really glad that my class gave me the excuse to do so. I actually bought a copy; well, I'm going to avoid buying my school books as much as possible, but I don't regret adding this one to my (literal) shelf.

I've touched briefly in a previous post about the current international sex trafficking issue. McCormick, with this story (told in a series of poetic vignettes, making me think somewhat of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, except that the story line was more chronologically coherent) presents a genuine story of a young girl from Nepal, who is sold into slavery and put into a brothel in India. At the beginning of the book, Lakshmi, a young girl, lives with her mother and stepfather. The stepfather is a cad, and doesn't work due to his malformed arm. Instead, he gambles away the little money that Lakshmi and her ama are able to earn from their meager crops. When the family comes into a desperate situation after a flood, the stepfather sells Lakshimi to a woman from "the city." Lakshmi thinks that she is going to be a maid in "the city," not so bad if it means sending money home to her family. That's the kind of situation that her best friend had gotten herself into. But Lakshmi, a poor girl, though bright, if not very well educated, doesn't know the fate that awaits her.

McCormick is not too graphic with the details of Lakshmi being raped by Mumtaz's customers. Mumtaz is the fat Indian woman who essentially owns her, and the other young women in  her house. Lakshmi believes that she will be able to pay off her "debt" to the monstrous woman, but she learns that it will never be so. She will work for her as a prostitute until she gets HIV and is thrown away to beg on the streets, a fate that came to her friend Monica. The story is driven by Lakshimi's determination to get away, and the little hopes and joys she finds in her terrible life: learning how to speak a little Hindi and English, and read a little of each; drinking the cups of tea that the kind delivery boy leaves for her, even though she doesn't dare indulge in even such a small luxury; watching American soap operas and Indian television with the other young women. But when she realizes that she can never get away (if she ran, she'd get caught, beaten, disfigured and disgraced), she becomes desperate, and in spite of the warnings, accepts an offer of help from an American man.

Now, I am a little bothered that Lakshmi's "savior" would be a white American. To be fair, though, McCormick does include a scene where Lakshimi has a drunk American as a "customer." I don't question the authenticity of McCormick's story, though. I know she traveled to India and Nepal and spoke with young women who had been through such experiences, many of them rescued not unlike Lakshmi in the end. I'm glad if men from my own country are doing something, in reality, to help poor girls who end up in such a situation...I guess I just get tired of the whole "white savior" thing, like we're that much better than everyone else or something.

I really don't have any real complaints about this book. As I noted, it was fast-paced, which would be really great for younger readers. Not too graphic, just enough so that Lakshmi's pain and horror could be felt. I think that any books that offer multicultural or international perspectives are important, not just for teen readers, but for all readers. I'm looking forward to discussing this book in my class, though I have to try to reign in my Hermoine tendencies. I'm not the only nerd in class (that's college, and especially grad school, for you), but I hate to be that person.

I couldn't resist putting the actual book cover on here. Look at that girl...she is a baby child. And I imagined that girl through the whole book...haunting.

I guess it's this simple: if people (men particularly, though there are women who are plenty twisted out there) weren't fucking perverts, there wouldn't be this problem. Lakshimi was 13 at the start of the book...probably 14 at the end...and she was ordered to tell "customers" that she was 12. That is disturbing, but what's worse is, I wasn't surprised. I lose faith in humanity sometimes.