Sold (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sold Karen Coats McCormick, Patricia Sold. Hyperion, 2006263p ISBN 0-7868-5171-6$15.99 R* Gr. 9-12 Although thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leads a hard and tenuous life in her poor Nepali village, she still finds pleasure in the beauty of her surroundings and the love of her mother. She wishes to go to the city to work as a maid so that she can send money home to help her mother and brother, but her stepfather's gambling habit sets her on a different path: he sells her for 800 rupees. Still thinking she is to be a maid, Lakshmi is confused when it begins to dawn on her that she has been sold once again, this time for 10,000 rupees, to a brothel in Calcutta. Lakshmi's nightmare begins with her being beaten and starved for refusing to cooperate, and then drugged while she is taken by multiple men. Resigned to her fate, she resolves to keep close track of her income so that she will know when she has paid off her debt to Mumtaz, the cruel mistress of the brothel. She soon learns, however, that Mumtaz has no intention of honoring that bargain, and that she must take her chances on a strange American who pays for her services but only wants to ask her questions and offer her freedom. The brief chapter-like vignettes of detached sentences are richly resonant with images by turns luminous, haunting, and horrifying, and within them Lakshmi's story unfolds with grim immediacy. Amidst the harrowing circumstances, Lakshmi experiences small acts of kindness from the other girls, their [End Page 181] children, and the kind boy who delivers their tea; these moments of grace serve more than anything to bring her situation into ghastly relief. Readers can't help but be moved by Lakshmi's fate; she gives a powerful and heartbreakingly lyrical voice to the hope, the hopelessness, and most of all, the humanity of the victims of the sex slave trade. A brief but informative author's note follows the text. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois