How to Cope with Tragedy

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 Sold by Patricia McCormick is an absolutely heart wrenching book. It's based on true facts of young Nepali girls being sold into sex trafficking in India. Lakshmi was only a thirteen year old girl who thought she was going to the city to work as a maid and she finds herself living in a house where she is constantly taken advantage of. The content is extremely heavy and hard to consume. However, it is also educational. To know that there are still places in our world that thrive on selling the services of young men and women is horrible, but it needs to be talked about. People need to know that this is still in existence so that they can be a part of the solution. 

The element of this book that I want to focus on for this particular review is the way that the young people in this book find to cope with the tragic acts being done to them and around them. McCormick uses these coping mechanisms to bring a little bit of light in a dark world. For instance, Pushpa, focuses all of her energy on raising her son and daughter. She continues to work at "Happiness House" because she is trying to provide for her children. Without her children, it is plausible to think that Pushpa would allow her sickness to kill her, but because of them, she has something to live for. While her life is not one that she is proud of, she is proud to have been given these two children to love and dote on. Anita has been living at the "Happiness House" for a long time, she has been beaten to the point of becoming permanently deformed and she has become numb to the realities of this life. But she finds joy in soap operas on television and helping Pushpa with her children. Harish dreams of playing soccer and getting a good education in order to take care of his family. What makes Harish unique is that he has the luxury of being able to look into the future for hope. Monica looks to fashion and magazines for comfort. She dreams of going back to her family, which gets her through the majority of the book. And then there is Shilpa. Shilpa is Mumtaz's right hand. But that kind of power has taken a toll on her, and she has become an alcoholic. The reader can assume that Shilpa starting drinking to cope with what her life had become and then very quickly became addicted. She did what she felt she had to do to survive, which helps the reader be able to sympathize with her a little more. Lakshmi has several coping mechanisms. She focuses on her home and her family. She smells her old clothes to remember what her home smelled like. She also likes to learn. The brightest part of Lakshmi's day is her lesson with Harish, when he teaches her English words and how to read. 

I think that McCormick brings in these coping mechanisms for a few reasons. First of all, it brings a little bit of lightness to the story. Reading about Pushpa's kids or Anita's soap opera shows that these women do have a few small pleasures. Second of all, I think that many of these vices prove how young these girls were when they were brought to this house. Monica, which we can infer is in her twenties, still sleeps with her baby doll. Although, she seems to be a hardened woman, she is still haunted by what has happened to her over the years. Third of all, it shows the readers these women's humanity. They are not hollow shells, they are resilient woman who are fighting not just to survive but to live. They are all holding on to the hope that one day they will be able to be free of all the hurt that this place brought them.

Comments

  1. Aniya HallOctober 5, 2020 at 7:15 AM

    Candace, I agree with your reasons for the inclusion of the girls' coping mechanisms. I didn't even think about these vices alluding to how young the girls were when they arrived, for example with Monica still sleeping with her doll baby. That make so much sense, yet also breaks my heart to wrap my head around.

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