On November 29th, our group had an interview with Patricia Mcormick about her book Sold. Sold is the story of a young girl in Nepal who is sold into the sexual trafficking system. She is trapped in a house with several other prostitutes and is forced to have sex with men to “pay off her debt.” Reading this book taught me a lot about one of the ways that girls’ minds are manipulated by pimps. She was made to believe that she couldn’t leave until she had earned enough money to pay back the pimp, even though she owed nothing to her. Patricia Mcormick is also the author of I Am Malala, My Brother’s Keeper, Cut, and several more books. We interviewed her at Starbucks and we learned a lot. In order to do the research for the book, Patricia traveled to India and Nepal where she visited Red Light Districts- places that are full of brothels. I hadn’t of Red Light Districts before that point, and it gave me another perspective of trafficking to look into. In the brothels she met a lot of children whose mothers were prostitutes. She said that the kids in the brothels lived horrible lives and she told us some stories about different kids she met. One story that really stood out to me was the story of a young boy who lived in a brothel because his mother was a prostitute. In the brothels, sometimes children are forced to sleep under the bed while their mother is with a customer, and they are fully aware of what is happening. This boy enjoyed to draw, and he showed some of his drawings to Patricia. In the pictures, he drew his mother as a queen, with beautiful clothing and jewelry. This is how he chose to see his mom, not as someone who is forced to have sex with several men every day, and owns nothing fancy or pretty. That is one example of what we learned from our interview with Patricia. I will always remember that story because it showed me how many different people are affected by sex trafficking. She was very interesting to talk to and also very nice. She told us a lot about the activism she did after visiting these places and what types of things we can do to help. I really enjoyed the interview because of the content and the new information I learned. I hope we get to have more like it as we go on.
