Sold

Sold was an interesting mix. It reminded me of Memoirs of a Geisha and a little of Slumdog Millionaire. The set up of the book was interesting. There were no chapters, just headings at the top of each day and her thoughts regarding that heading. Sometimes the page was full, sometimes it wasn't. It almost felt like reading a diary.

The premise of the story is that a young girl from Nepal is sold by her stepfather to feed his gambling problem and to pay the bills. She thinks she is going to the "city" to become a maid and I am pretty sure her stepfather doesn't care where she goes as long as he gets paid for her. She travels for a couple days blindly trusting those who have taken her because that's all she really can do. In the end she is sold to a whore house in Calcutta. She describes being locked up and drugged so that she can't fight when the men come at night. The rest of the book is her attempting to keep her humanity and eventually the risk she takes to trust an American to help her escape her life there (after a year or two).

There are lots of things that are wrong with prostitution, but one thing I can never understand is when women are in charge! I mean, it is sad to say and a little stereotypical, but I feel like a man as a pimp is more understandable because of the way that a lot of men objectify women. However in Sold and also in Memoirs of a Geisha it is so much more disturbing to read about these women who enslave young girls. How can they forget what it was like to be a 12 year old girl? Where is the rationalization for tying a girl to a bed or drugging her or beating her so she won't fight back or try and run away? It is so hard for me to understand how/why a woman could do that to another (which ...may be a good thing that I can't relate to that mentality, yes?) My only thought is that maybe it is a perpetual cycle. Young women are sold into the sex trade. When they finally pay off their "debt" and are free, if they don't have diseases, then maybe they take over the role of madam in a different whorehouse? Feeling perhaps that to justify what happened to them must happen to others? The problem with that logic is then how to experience something so horrible and work so hard to put other people through the same hell. Thoughts?