This National Book Award finalist was written with great insight and depth by McCormick, was inspired by a chance meeting with a photographer who was working undercover, documenting the slave trade overseas. Hearing his stories, she was so moved that she began working on the book. Sold follows one girl, Lakshmi, as she was sold into slavery and prostitution.
Lakshmi lived a hardscrabble existence in Nepal, at the foot of the Himalayas. Times were rough, but Lakshmi was willing to do her part in helping the family survive. When her family told her she could help out by going to another city and working as a maid, she accepts the chance to help.
Little does she know, her stepfather has actually sold her into prostitution.
She ends up in a Calcutta slum where she is beaten, starved, and raped. McCormick keeps the book in first-person, present tense, bringing the story alive for the reader, sometimes too much so. McCormick's writing is brutally graphic, with no sugar-coating that Western audiences are so accustomed to. This is not a book that tells you about the problem from a comfortable third-person distance; this is living and experiencing the life of one girl on a day-to-day basis.
However, there are breaks. The book is actually a series of vignettes, and the space between each little story gives the reader a chance to breathe. But then it all starts up again, and you see Lakshmi's horror and despair, and her tiny flashes of hope that keep her going, like when the errand boy for the brothel begins to teach her some English. The new distraction invigorates Lakshmi, and you see hope come to life in her, and you're rooting for her to succeed and somehow figure a way out of this living hell.
The poetic style of many parts of this book reflect against the backdrop of the brutal subject matter. At times I found McCormick's chosen style beautiful, other times I found it distracting. That's a call you'll have to make for yourself. But there are many good quotes from this book that are very telling about how these cultures view women - more as a commodity than a person. And that's where this horrible practice originates.
Lakshmi's determination and fight to educate herself are all factors in the reasonably happy ending for her. But McCormick doesn't ever let you forget that every girl who gets rescued, gets sick, or dies, is replaced by at least one new girl. The sex trade is alive and well in these countries, and until the United States begins to put some pressure on them, they have absolutely no incentive to stop.
But politics aren't the focus here: Lakshmi is. It's her story, but McCormick's research provides a rich backdrop, allowing those of us with comfortable lives to glimpse a culture half a world away and see the needs there. Maybe, just maybe, this book will inspire you to get up and do something about this injustice, even if it's just giving a few dollars to the foundation named at the back of the book.