Sold by Patricia McCormick

A Brief Summary

Sold is a book written in verse, though the form can change from section to section, which follows the story of a young girl named Lakshmi. Lakshmi is a peasant girl from a small village in Nepal, where her family is very poor, as are many of her neighbors. There are many simple joys and heartaches to Lakshmi's life, like her stepfather who gambles what little money the family has or her dreams of marrying one of the local boys. This changes for Lakshmi when a monsoon tears through the village, leaving their crop ruined and the family in dire straights. It is here that Lakshmi volunteers to serve as a maid in one of the rich houses in the city, as one of her friends before her has done, and bring money to the family that way. What happens instead, is that Lakshmi's stepfather sells her into sexual slavery without her knowing.

From there, Sold takes on a different tone as Lakshmi struggles to survive in her new environment and dreams of one day returning to the mountain she calls home. Along the way, she meets other members of the pleasure house that she has been sold to and learns of the ways in which they survive and even raise families. Things come to a head when the chance for freedom presents itself and Lakshmi has to decide if she is brave enough to try and escape this world she has been sent to.

Thematic Elements

Sold has strong elements of culture shock, isolation, despair, and hope. The reader really does have to adjust to the differences between Lakshmi's beliefs and their own, which can be difficult, given how drastically different it is from what most American readers would consider the norm. Lakshmi herself has to adjust in such a manner after she leaves her home in Nepal and is sold to the pleasure house. Life at the pleasure house is a strange twist of despair and hope, as the residents are friendly to Lakshmi, but she still struggles with the desire to return to the way that things were before she came to such an awful place.

Analysis

This is a book for more mature readers, as the content is not necessarily graphic but is very suggestive. Lakshmi and the other women of the pleasure house are slaves, pure and simple, and their bodies are being violated. Senior readers are capable of handling the book's seedier elements, though a case could be made for Juniors reading the text. Overall, this book is a gripping (and deceptively fast) read, but the content is what needs to be evaluated.

A Little Something More

Sold would be right at home in any unit involving civil rights or world cultures, as it has elements of both in the narrative. It could also be an interesting read in a class that is focused on a woman's role in history across different cultures, as Lakshmi's beliefs regarding her place in her culture are very different from what we as Americans would believe. It is for this reason that it would make a fine addition to such a reading list, as it challenges ideas of what it means to be a powerful woman. (And Lakshmi is assuredly powerful, for her ability to endure and survive in the pleasure house.)