Sold and Modern Day Slavery

Sold by author Patricia McCormick is a painful yet necessary book for young adult readers to study.  McCormick’s story recounts the life of Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old Nepali girl who is sold into slavery in India, and demonstrates that adolescent experiences are drastically different across the world.  The language and style of Sold are simple and easy to comprehend, making it a quick read, but the topic covered in the novel is far more intense.  Although many young adult readers are aware that sexual slavery still exists today, Sold forces westerners to recognize the prevalence of slavery in developing countries today.

In Sold, McCormick masterfully paints a world and experiences that differ so greatly from the everyday lives of western readers of this novel that the circumstances Lakshmi faces come as a jarring realization.  In America, in particular, poverty has a shockingly different meaning than it does in Lakshmi’s home country of Nepal.  Even the poor in America typically have access to water, shelter, and at least a basic education.  Many living below the poverty line in America have televisions and are still able to have regular meals.  In the Nepalese mountains, the impoverished face far more daunting challenges.  Lakshmi’s family spends the dry season wasting away, desperately trying to last long enough to make it until the rainy season.  The family comes disturbingly close to death by dehydration, with the unnamed little brother facing the worst effects.  In the western world, this experience is alien to most.  Even in areas such as Flint, Michigan, where the water is poisoned by lead, westerners can still buy bottled water.  This is not an option for those living in remote villages such as Lakshmi’s.  Yet, the rainy season does come, and with it come new challenges.  When the rain doesn’t subdue, the thatch roof on Lakshmi’s home is unable to hold.  Lakshmi knows that her family will never be able to afford frivolous products, so she and her mother dream, saying, “Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing:  Imagining what may be”  (McCormick 29).  Although her family is devastatingly poor, they never lose hope in what the future holds.  In America, we take things such as an access to water and a solid roof over our heads for granted.  The experiences of those in Nepal that McCormick reveals in Sold prove that although first world countries, such as America, have various struggles, most westerners cannot begin to fathom the level of poverty in developing and third world countries.

The extreme poverty McCormick illustrates within the first part of Sold paves the way for the perceived necessity of selling young girls into sexual slavery.  In Sold, it is implied that two girls from one village, Gita and Lakshmi, were both sold into sexual slavery by their families.  Sold was written in 2006, and, unfortunately, sexual slavery in Nepal has only become more prevalent since.  In 2015, an earthquake devastated the country, leaving 9,000 dead and another 20,000 injured.  Research conducted by Developing World Connections, an international volunteer program, estimates that eight million Nepalis had their entire lives uprooted by the disaster, thus forcing millions deeper into poverty.  Because more families in Nepal are facing extreme poverty, more and more young women and girls are being sold into Indian brothels each year.  When modern-day slavery is discussed in schools today, most young people aren’t able to comprehend the prevalence of these crimes today.  Sold is a crucial novel for young adults to read as it helps broaden young people’s understanding of human rights violations in our modern world.

Overall, McCormick’s Sold is very different from the archetypal adolescent literature novel.  There’s no meet-cutes, no fantastical summer fling, no central romance.  Yet, Sold portrays a harshly realistic insight into the experiences of adolescents in developing countries.  Sold shows that adolescence is not a single, universal experience all young people share.  Instead, the years of youth that so many take for granted are robbed of young girls in developing countries far too often.  Although the content of Sold may be too intense for some high schoolers, I feel that it is a novel that everyone should read at some point over their lives.  After all, if we remain oblivious to the struggles of girls like Lakshmi, how can we prompt change?  Although Sold and Lakshmi are fictional, the girls and women Patricia McCormick interviewed for her research are very much real.  Thus, Sold is an incredibly important book for young adults to read so they may enact change and fight for the rights of the real Nepali girls who face these circumstances today.