Introduction

Sold is a young adult novel published in 2006 by American author Patricia McCormick. The protagonist and first-person narrator is Lakshmi, a Nepali girl from a remote mountain village who is 13 when she is trafficked for sex to an illicit organization in a large city in India. Through a series of short, titled poems (or vignettes), Lakshmi chronicles her experiences in the brothel called the “Happiness House,” recording her experiences with the people she meets there, and detailing how she finally engineers her own rescue. McCormick has netted a myriad of honors for this particular novel; Sold won the California Young Reader Medal in 2007 and was a National Book Award finalist, as well as being adapted into a movie in 2014.

This guide refers to the first trade paperback edition published in 2008.

Content Warning: The storyline of Sold features upsetting topics, including child sex trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children, which are forms of modern slavery, as set out by the United Nations (“The Human Faces of Modern Slavery.” United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery). The text also includes references to physical abuse and death by suicide. All of the aforementioned issues are discussed in this guide.

Plot Summary

Struggling financially, Lakshmi’s family lives in a remote mountain village in Nepal, where Lakshmi’s unemployed stepfather gambles away any money that she and her mother, Ama, make by selling the crops that they grow. Lakshmi has an affectionate goat and a baby brother, but four of her other siblings have died. The family needs a new roof and sometimes goes hungry. Lakshmi wants to go work as a maid in the city like her friend, Gita, has done in order to provide for her family. However, there are several reasons for Lakshmi to stay at home, for she is a top student in school, and her mother wants her to continue her studies. Additionally, she is also excited for her upcoming arranged marriage to a local boy named Krishna.

The family’s fortune worsens when a monsoon washes away their rice crop. After spending his winnings on fancy clothes for himself and losing the remaining money (as well as his new possessions) in another round of gambling, Lakshmi’s stepfather finally declares that it is time for Lakshmi to go work as a maid after all. He brings Lakshmi to a trader woman named Bajai Sita, who pays him a huge sum in exchange for Lakshmi. Then, a woman called Auntie Bimla takes Lakshmi part of the way to the city and passes her off to a man called only Uncle Husband, who pretends to be Lakshmi’s husband in order to cross the patrolled border into India. Uncle Husband then brings Lakshmi to a brothel called “Happiness House.” The brothel is run by a woman named Mumtaz, who pays the man a large sum to purchase Lakshmi.

Another woman takes Lakshmi to a room, where a man soon tries to rape her. Lakshmi runs off, terrified and confused, but Mumtaz follows and explains that Lakshmi has been sold to this brothel and must therefore have sex with customers until she has paid off her “debt,” at which point she can supposedly leave. Lakshmi refuses to do this, so Mumtaz locks her in the room, starving her and beating her over the course of several days. When Lakshmi still refuses to comply, Mumtaz drugs her and allows men to rape her while she is unconscious or unable to move. After a while, Mumtaz stops drugging Lakshmi and takes her to the open space of the rest of the house, where the other girls and women (as well as their children) live and work.

Among the other inhabitants of the house are Shahanna, who befriends Lakshmi and gives her advice; Anita, who once tried to escape and was beaten so badly that her face can no longer form a smile; and Monica, who gets the most customers and will soon be able to leave. Monica also has a daughter, whom Mumtaz uses as leverage against her. Another resident mother is Pushpa, who started working at the Happiness House after her husband died and left her with two children, who also live with her here. Additionally, the inhabitants are surveilled by an older woman named Shilpa, who is there voluntarily as Mumtaz’s spy. Lakshmi does find some small sliver of goodness in this situation when Pushpa’s eight-year-old boy, Harish, finds her looking at his storybook one day and begins teaching her to read and speak Hindi and English. They become friends, but eventually Pushpa gets sick, and Mumtaz evicts her and her children. The same thing also happens to Monica. Before Harish leaves, he tells Lakshmi about his kind American teacher, and how the Americans want to help girls like Lakshmi to escape their situations.

Mumtaz pays the local police a bribe each month so that they will not shut down her illegal business, which revolves around the commercial sexual exploitation of children. However, one month she is late with her usual payment, so the police raid her business and take Shahanna (but no one else). Anita is now Lakshmi’s only remaining friend in the house. The girls are aware that a group of Americans sometimes tries to help free children in their situation. However, Anita believes that these Americans try to trick such children into escaping, only to parade them naked through the streets in shame, then return them to the brothels. Because of this, Lakshmi is afraid to go with an American man who offers to help her and gives her a business card. However, remembering her conversation with Harish about his American teacher, she eventually decides to risk contact with the American man again in the hopes of organizing her own rescue. To this end, she slips the American’s business card to a Street Boy who sells tea and asks him to send someone from that organization back to her.

Another American arrives and interviews Lakshmi, then promises to come back with backup later. He does, and Lakshmi is able to muster the courage to go with them and save the other children as well.