Sold by Patricia McCormick was the choice book that I read after the first week of class. In attempt to portray sex slavery and child trafficking as truthfully as possible, Patricia McCormick traveled to Nepal and to the red-light district of Calcutta, India to take part in researching the injustices that are a reality in those countries. It is hard to imagine a world with lives so different from the lives of people in the “western world.” Patricia McCormick’s attempt to shed light on this very real issue follows the life of Lakshmi, a thirteen year-old Nepali girl who is sold into prostitution in her family’s last resort to escape poverty. After reading Sold, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my own life. Why was I born into a white, middle-class family in the U.S.? Why did I have the opportunity to have access to education? How is it possible for my parents to get so enraged at the election of a president with views they don’t necessarily agree with, when there are, according to research done by Patricia McCormick, nearly 12,000 Nepali girls sold into sexual slavery each year? How is this possible? And probably most disturbing, if people know about this, why is there nothing being done to stop it? How can things like this happen in the world, meanwhile, people can live their lives here in the United States never hearing a single thing about child sex trafficking? All I can think is that there is nothing okay about it, but where do you start? How do you even begin to combat an issue like this? I am very grateful to authors like Patricia McCormick that bring the tough issues into light. The fact that books like Sold are being put on shelves in bookstores and being rented out to young adults in libraries makes me very happy. Happy is an understatement. Authors who venture into topics that are difficult to talk about, read about, and even think about impress me. At this point in young adult literature and the age of the internet, adolescents in the United States have access to almost unlimited information on what is going on in the world around them, and that is something that I know will continue to open doors.
Chelsea Heckathorn
