Sold, written by Patricia McCormick, tells the story of one of many girl who are tricked and trapped into the world of sex trafficking in Nepal. Little Lakshmi thinks she is going to become a maid for a rich family in the city however, she ends up in the Happiness House where she is forced to “pay of her debt” by sleeping with men. At first she is hopeful of returning to her family. However after constantly being lied to she does not know who is telling the truth and can’t trust anybody. “I shut my eyes tight. I don’t know what to believe. I believed that stranger in the yellow cloud dress was taking me to the city to work as a maid. I believed that Uncle Husband would protect me from the bad city people. I believed that if I worked hard enough here at Happiness House, I could pay down my debt. And I believed it was all worth it for the sake of my family” (250). Sold not only opens our eyes to the prominent world of sex trafficking but also teaches a very important lesson: to not always believe what you are told. Lakshmi has to learn this the hard way and only by shear luck does she manage to escape with the help of the Americans. We can all learn a lot from this story and hopefully some day we will be able to build a future without Sex trafficking.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Makenna Finch Post 5
Looking back to the beginning of time we can see that stories have always played an important roll in our society. In Native American cultures the elders would tell their tribe essential stories that would help them move forward as a people. Now we see story telling even implemented in our school curriculum through history textbooks. The reason why stories are so important to our society is because they help us from not repeating our mistakes. In order to develop as a civilization we can’t just be stuck making the same mistakes over and over and so these stories, our history, opens our eyes to what we can change to become better. These stories show the light on subjects of concern and major problems. This is all in hope that we can take our history and learn from our mistakes to create a brighter future.
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I totally agree with you Makenna. That stories have been with humans since the beginning of time. It helps other people understand what the people are going through in their lives. Also with the sex trafficking now that we know more about it would could help them in the future.
ReplyDeleteYou are completely right, Makena. The problem with stories is that, in Lakshmi's case, they are all she has. She has no choice but to believe everything that she hears. No one is there to tell her otherwise. She learns that this is something she is going to have to overcome and do anything to escape the Happiness House. In the very end of the book, Anita is begging her to come into the closet to hide from the Americans that she heard, through stories, were evil men there to harm them. However, Lakshmi overcame her sense persuasion from all of the stories and followed her intuition and ran downstairs to see what she explained as "Her American. There are other men with him, Indian men, and the American lady from the picture" (263). By breaking the belief of all the stories and following her own intuition, oppose to those around her, she saved herself from the Happiness House.
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