Sold (novel)
Encyclopedia
Sold is a novel by Patricia McCormick, published in 2006. It tells the story of a girl from Nepal
named Lakshmi, who is sold into sexual slavery
in India
. The novel is written in a series of short, vignette-style chapters, from the point of view of the main character.
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.
An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt – then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.
Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words – “Simply to endure is to triumph” – and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision – will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?
Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.
To research Sold, Patricia McCormick traveled to India and Nepal where she interviewed the women of Calcutta’s red-light district and girls who have been rescued from the sex trade. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Cut and My Brother’s Keeper.
. McCormick based the village Lakshmi lives on those she traveled to. She also spoke with girls and women in Calcutta's red-light district, where she learned about the many horrors of the system from two teenage girls who had escaped it. McCormick explained that "part of them became Lakshmi." McCormick also spoke with those who sold the girls into the system for profit. When she interviewed one man who was in prison for selling his fiancee, McCormick says, "He told me, without a trace of embarassment, he wanted a motorcycle . . . He was utterly unconcerned about his fate; he knew he would get off in court."
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
named Lakshmi, who is sold into sexual slavery
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...
in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The novel is written in a series of short, vignette-style chapters, from the point of view of the main character.
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.
An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt – then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.
Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words – “Simply to endure is to triumph” – and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision – will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?
Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.
To research Sold, Patricia McCormick traveled to India and Nepal where she interviewed the women of Calcutta’s red-light district and girls who have been rescued from the sex trade. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Cut and My Brother’s Keeper.
Characters
- Lakshmi, a thirteen year old farm girl in Nepal, is the narrator and protagonist of the novel Sold. When the monsoons come and her family’s crops are destroyed, she is sold into sex slavery by her stepfather.
- Ama, Lakshmi’s mother, is described as a typical village wife. She bears her family’s struggles by being the only working adult in their household, but she still manages to be beautiful, at least in her daughter’s eyes, “My ama, with her crow-black hair braided...her cinnamon skin, and her ears hung with the joyful noise of tinkling gold, to me, is more lovely.”
- Stepfather, a lazy gambler, is Ama’s second husband in the novel. He spends his days at the teashop gambling and conversing with the old men and sees no value in Lakshmi. Stepfather is always willing to spend the family’s earnings on unnecessary selfish items for himself.
- Auntie Bimla, described as a modern women by Lakshmi , takes Lakshmi on a long journey into the city where the naive farm girl thinks she is going to work as a maid.
- Uncle Husband, described as a “slapping man”, takes Lakshmi across the border to the place where she is to work. While on their journey, he orders her to call him husband, probably because he didn’t want to attract any negative attention towards them. After he drops Lakshmi off at her destination,the Happiness House, she never sees him again.
- Mumtaz, the owner of the Happiness House, is portrayed as a cruel and selfish woman. She oversees all the girls and “manages” their debts. Mumtaz is known for her ruthless punishments such as locking girls up for weeks. She instills fear in every inhabitant of the Happiness House.
- Shahanna, Lakshmi’s first friend at the Happiness House, is a girl with “teardrop eyes and deep brown skin, like the hide of a nut” . Shahanna is from Lakshmi’s country and helps her get accustomed to her new life. In the novel they become best friends, sticking together to survive Mumtaz’s wrath. Shahanna is taken away when the police raid the Happiness House because Mumtaz was late on her bribes to them.
- Pushpa, a “coughing woman”, is one of Lakshmi’s roommates in the novel. Pushpa came to work for Mumtaz when her husband died. She has a baby girl and an eight year old son. Her illness gets her and her children kicked out of the house by Mumtaz who feels Pushpa is a waste of her money.
- Shilpa, the “aging bird girl”, is Mumtaz’s spy. Her character is described as having “the reed-thin body of a girl and the hollow cheeks of an old woman. She is, under the folds of her yellow dress, frail as a baby bird.” Shilpa is at the Happiness House of her own volition. Shilpa is also an alcoholic.
- Anita, The “half frowning girl”, is one of Lakshmi’s roommates. In the novel, Anita is also from Lakshmi’s and Shahanna’s country. Once she ran away but the goonda, men who work for Mumtaz, caught her, beat her, and returned her to the Happiness House. They are the reason her face is lopsided. It’s hard to read Anita sometimes because of her aloof manner, but she and Lakshmi become friends towards the end of the novel.
- Harish, The David Beckham boy, is Pushpa’s eight year old son. He is obsessed with David Beckham and soccer. He goes to school everyday and comes home to the Happiness House. In the novel Lakshmi is envious of Harish because he gets to live a semi-normal life and she doesn’t. After he catches her looking at his book, Harish offers to teach Lakshmi English and Hindi. Harish runs errands for the girls and their customers at night. Sometimes he earns a few rupees. “a boy of about eight comes in and flings a backpack in the corner. He has hair that sticks up like the tassels on a cornstalk and knees as knobby as a baby goats.”
- Street Boy, a tea vendor, Comes to the Happiness House everyday to sell tea to the girls. He flirts with them but doesn’t sleep with them. At first, Lakshmi is ashamed to be seen in the Happiness House by him, but when he starts giving her gifts of food, they form a bond. Unfortunately, he is given a new route, and they never see each other again. Lakshmi never learns this character’s name.
- Monica, one of the highest earning characters in the Happiness house, has almost paid off her debt. She also has a very short temper. She has a daughter at her home who she’s paying school fees for. Monica says the people will thank and honor her and Lakshmi when they get home for sending money. When Monica returns home, she is not greeted with honor, but run out of her own village and comes back to the Happiness House. After a while, she is thrown out because she caught the “virus”.
- The American, an undercover cop in the novel, comes to Lakshmi as a customer, but when they come to her room, asks her questions such as “do you want to leave this place?”. He ends up coming later with American police to save Lakshmi.
Background
To research for Sold, author Patricia McCormick traveled and interviewed people who had experienced the "system" of sexual slavery. This system has "native girls believing they are going to get jobs," when really they end up "in brothels with no way to escape."To observe more about the system and interview the people in it, McCormick traveled to "a shelter in Kathmandu" and a village in the HimalayasHimalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
. McCormick based the village Lakshmi lives on those she traveled to. She also spoke with girls and women in Calcutta's red-light district, where she learned about the many horrors of the system from two teenage girls who had escaped it. McCormick explained that "part of them became Lakshmi." McCormick also spoke with those who sold the girls into the system for profit. When she interviewed one man who was in prison for selling his fiancee, McCormick says, "He told me, without a trace of embarassment, he wanted a motorcycle . . . He was utterly unconcerned about his fate; he knew he would get off in court."
Reception
Sold received positive reviews for exposing readers to an unfamiliar world. Kirkus reviews, for instance, commented that “McCormick provides readers who live in safety and under protection of the law with a vivid window into a harsh and cruel world.” Booklist agreed, saying Sold is “[a]n unforgettable account of sexual slavery as it exists now.”Style
McCormick's direct narrative style was noted by reviewers. Booklist commented that the “brutality and cruelty [of the subject matter] are ever present . . . but not sensationalized.” It also commemorated the novel's “[b]eautiful prose and free verse that remains true to the child’s viewpoint.”Major themes
A Kirkus review explained that “Sold focuses on the essential question of whether it is possible to trust when all that one has trusted has been proven untrustworthy.”Awards and honors
- ALA Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults 2007
- National Book Award Finalist 2007
- National Public Radio - Top 100 Books of the Year 2007
- Book Sense Pick 2007
- California Young Reader MedalCalifornia Young Reader MedalThe California Young Reader Medal is an award given annually to books nominated and voted on by children in California. The medal was established in 1974 and encourages recreational reading...
2007 - Quill Award 2007
- Gustav-Heinemann-Peace Prize 2008
- Elliot Rosewater Award 2009-2010