Title: Sold Author: Patricia McCormick
Publication date: 2008
Number of pages: 272
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Geographical Setting: Himalayan Mountain village of Nepal, Red Light District of Calcutta, India
Time Period: 2000s
Series: N/A
Plot Summary: Thirteen year old Lakshmi leaves her small village and her mother, baby brother and pet goat to work as a maid in the city to help pay the debts caused by the damaging monsoon and her gambling stepfather. Her stepfather introduces her to a glamorous stranger to take her to the city. Her new “auntie” takes her to “Happiness House” in the slums of Calcutta and soon Lakshmi realizes her stepfather has sold her to a brothel that she may be indebted to for many years.
Subject Headings: sex trade, prostitution, child prostitution, sexual slavery, rape, poverty, human trafficking, HIV and AIDS
Appeal: novel told in verse-like prose, story of the very real and current issues of sex trade in Nepal and India , cultural myths about purity and curing of HIV through having sex with a virgin, contrast of poverty and struggles of those in the mountain village with those living in the slums of Calcutta, rights and status of women in Nepal and India.
If you like Sold, you might enjoy: Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence: As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues others. The true story of a Cambodian heroine, Ellen Hopkin’s Burned.
