Response to "Sold"

I wasn't expecting this to be a light book going in.  I knew what it was going to be about and am glad I knew before hand.  It is always weird to pick up a book and be super shocked by the material.  I say this because after reading, this is going to be a book that i put in my tool belt of good books to use for a classroom.  This book was interesting and hard to put down once picked up.  For me at least it was.  When I go into books now, I ask myself would I care about this when I was a kid, because I hated reading then.  Even with the gritty subject matter, this book will be one that gets students' attention and keep it.

While reading, the only thing that I could think was about how outlandish this book really seemed.  None of what happened was something that i imagined was happening.  Knowing that it was a true story, it was something that I had to keep reminding myself of when reading.  I also think this is good for students because it takes an issue that is current world and exposes it to them without giving them material that is dated or obsolete.  I think that the strong point of the book is that it is a true story and it is happening around the world.  It is a bit of an eye opener because after reading about how this all happened, I can see similar situations happening everywhere.  The way she sets the story up with a  hard working mother and dead beat father is not something new and is probably quite prominent around the world.  It was so easy for him to sell his daughter into slavery.  While he didn't express that he knew exactly what it was, I think that he had an idea or would not admit it to himself.  But that also raises another question about the situation.  What would have happened to the girl if she stayed at home rather than being sold into slavery?  I know that it is a touchy subject and not one with an easy answer.  I think either way, her life would have been bad.  While I don't think that slavery is good, I wonder if it was what made her into the person she is today.  It reminds me of the Johnathan Swift story "A Modest Proposal" where he satirically provides a solution to eliminating poverty by having the poor sell their babies to the rich in order to eat.  He made light of the situation but really hit the nail on the head about the subject.  There is no easy answer to how to eliminate human trafficking or poverty.

One thing that struck me was that this book also doubled as a coming of age tale, but not one that was a generic American one.  I feel like those books are a dime-a-dozen.  Books like this and "Night" are great ones to show the bad side of coming of age tales.  Wiesel's coming of age was surviving in a death camp and watching his father die.  Lakshmi's coming of age was having to have sex with random men at the age of 12.  She didn't get any preparation, just a notification that she owed 30,000(?) rupees for her freedom and she would receive 30 per costumer.  She was going to be in for the long haul and she knew it.  She had to grow up right there because she would not have survived otherwise.