Sold

                To begin with, reading this book has been one of the hardest yet informational things I have had to read throughout my schooling. Reading about slavery and specifically the sex trade is something that will never be easy, and yet I agree with this book being required for us to read as we need to know what is going on in the world around us. The book Sold by Patricia McCormick gave me a better understanding of the sex trade along with what goes on in the world around us.

                One of the first things I found interesting within the book is how Lakshmi takes on raising her goat. There is a lot of emphasis put on the goat and I found it interesting that while the family is struggling to eat they are able to still raise a goat. Within my group on Monday we spoke about how this must have been Lakshmis’ prized possession much like how we have cars or trinkets of our own. As I began to think about her goat as her prized possession, I wondered how much money could have been received for the goat. I later made the comparison that if Lakshmi was only paid around eleven dollars for that the goat could not have brought in very much money.

                Lakshmi being sold for a little fewer than eleven dollars brought me to my second struggle within this book. How can a person sell another person? While it is hard to connect all of the pieces and understand everything that goes into a family selling their child, just reading through this book sent shivers down my spine. I would like to think it takes a lot to shock me now, but so much that we have talked about with human trafficking and reading the pages within Sold have done just that. Once Lakshmi had been sold into prostitution, I could not imagine how her world came crashing down once she realized what had happened. To think you are going to make money and help your family would give someone such hope and determination, but in this case to become a sex slave has to seem like the world is coming to an end.

                One thing I found very cool and interesting is how the author, Patricia McCormick, went to Nepal and India in search of evidence. The fact that Patricia was able to interview women of the Calcutta red-light district was both good when realizing she knew what she was talking about throughout the book, but also gut wrenching at the same time. I could not imagine the pain that interviewing women formerly trapped in the sex slave trade would feel like. When writing a book like this on such a tough subject, the interviews had to of helped with facts used within the story and getting the background knowledge necessary to put an entire book together like this.

                Reading material like this is something I fee will never become easy, yet the knowledge that has come from reading material of this magnitude will never hinder me. While it may be hard to talk about or even keep flipping the pages, learning about the sex slave trade has really opened my eyes. Reading Sold along with the discussions on the sex slave trade have enlightened me on the magnitude of this problem and how it hits so close to home when I had no idea before.