User:Renee.ambroso/Student draft of Sold

==Characters== Lakshmi, the main character and protagonist in sold is a thirteen year old girl who lives in a very remote village in Nepal. She is the narrator of the story, and it takes place on the mountainside where she lives and the Happiness House, an institution she is illegally sold to. By the end of the novel, she is fourteen. When she is traveling with Uncle Husband and at the Happiness House, she endures horrible beatings, starvation, sickness and being constantly raped. She also goes through emotional damage, being lied to and put down by so many people. Towards the end of the book, she describes herself by saying “Sometime I see a girl who is growing into womanhood. Other days I see a girl growing old before her time. It doesn’t matter, of course. Because no one will ever want me now.” Page 178, Am I Pretty?
 * ’’’Lakshmi’’’

Ama is Lakshmi’s mother, and is thirty one. Lakshmi and Ama are very close and Ama is a role model for Lakshmi, and Lakshmi says “And her slender back, which bears our troubles- and all our hopes- is more beautiful still.” Page 7, Something Beautiful
 * ’’’Ama’’’

Stepfather is, as his name implies, Lakshmi’s stepfather. He was married to Ama after Lakshmi’s father died and is the father of her baby brother. Every night Stepfather goes to the local store to gamble and play cards.
 * ’’’Stepfather’’’

Auntie Bimla is a woman who works for Mumtaz and comes to Lakshmi’s village to buy her. Lakshmi and her mother are told that she will go be a maid for a rich family, but Ama and Stepfather must know they are really selling her into prostitution because of the conversation that Stepfather has with Auntie Bimla: “Instead, she motions for him to step inside the back room with her. “She has no hips,” I hear her say. “And she’s plain as porridge. I’ll give you five hundred.” Page 53, A Trade
 * ’’’Auntie Bimla’’’

Uncle Husband is also working for Mumtaz and takes Lakshmi over the Indian border with him. He tells her that the border police are bad people and will try to harm her if she does not say she is his wife. Lakshmi is very grateful for his protection but is also wary of him. She says “When we played make believe, I sometimes had a husband. But it was Kirshna, the young goatherd with sleepy cat eyes, not an old, turnip-nose man who doles out sweets and slaps with the same hand.” Page 77, Uncle Husband.
 * ’’’Uncle Husband’’’

Mumtaz is the woman who owns the “Happiness House” and the girls. When Lakshmi first sees her, Mumtaz is described as being very fat and having a face “as plump as an overripe mango.” Page 92, Ten Thousand Rupees. She is very unkind to them and tells them many lies about what will happen if they try to run away. She does not hesitate to beat them with her leather strap and her routine with the new girls is to lock them in a room with no food or water for days if they initially refuse to obey her. She even drugs Lakshmi with lassi, a drink made with yogurt, when she refuses.
 * ’’’Mumtaz’’’

Shahanna is a girl from the Happiness House who is very kind to Lakshmi when she first arrives and is one of the three other girls who share a room with her later in the book. Shahanna is the only one who tries to tell Lakshmi what is happening when she first arrives at the house, and Shahanna is one of Lakshmi’s best friends. Lakshmi is devastated when she is taken by the police during a raid where they search the house for girls. Lakshmi describes the scene, saying “ I ran upstairs, saw our room on chaos, our beds overturned, Anita’s movie star posters ripped from the wall. The worst is what I do not see: Shahanna.” Page 215, Raid
 * ’’’Shahanna’’’

Anita is a girl from Nepal who also shares Laksmi’s room. Anita tried to escape once and when she was caught she was beaten with a metal pole, destroying her jaw so that now she can only move one side of her face. At the end of the book Anita is the only girl left who has been there longer than Lakshmi. “I sit up, as if waking from a long sleep, and see this poor girl with the lopsided face. She is all I have left in the world.” Page 220, All I Have Left
 * ’’’Anita’’’

Pushpa came to work willingly in the Happiness House when her husband died. She is sick with a disease that makes her cough and spit blood. She has two young children, Harish and Jeena. Pushpa is the other woman who shares the room with Lakshmi, Anita and Shahanna..
 * ’’’Pushpa’’’

Monica is described as having a very unpredictable temper, and she is different than the other girls when it comes to getting customers. Monica is sometimes mean, but she shows Lakshmi kindness after Harish leaves, who taught Lakshmi English and Hindu words. Monica gives Lakshmi an old doll, and she says “And I understand then, somehow, that Monica, the thirsty vine, Monica, the one with tricks to make the men pay extra, sleeps with this tattered rag doll.” Page 202, Instead Of Harish. Monica actually does pay off her debt, but when she returns to her village her people shun and scorn her and send her away, telling her young daughter that she is dead. Monica returns only to catch the uncureable “virus” and be sent out on the streets alone.
 * ’’’Monica’’’

Shilpa is described, when Lakshmi first meets her, as the “aging bird girl”. Shiplas mom was also in “the family business” and she is an alcoholic. Shilpa is also said to be Mumtaz’s spy among the other girls.
 * ’’’Shilpa’’’

Harish and Jeena are Pushpas children. They live in the House with the girls but are allowed to leave for school and at night. Harish befriends Lakshmi and teaches her some English and Hindu, enabling her to communicate with the Americans when they come.
 * ’’’Harish and Jeena’’’

The girls say that the Americans will try to save them but lie and will make them walk around naked in the streets. This is one of the lies they are told to prevent them from escaping.When an American comes to Lakshmi’s room pretending to be a customer he gives her a card with a name on it she can use to contact them. At first she doesn’t want to believe him, but when the tea boy had to go on another route through the city she asks him to tell the Americans that she wants their help.
 * ’’’The Americans’’’

Kirshna is a sheep herder in the village that Lakshmi lives in. Lakshmi has and arranged marriage to him, but she seems to genuinely like him. Kirshna is very shy and they never have a conversation in the book. When she is leaving the village with Auntie Bimla, she sees Kirshna and wishes she could say goodbye to him. “As we reach the end of the village, I turn around one last time. And steal one last look at the boy I have been watching for as long as I can remember.” Page 56, A Second Look.
 * ’’’Kirshna’’’

Lakshmi’s very young brother who is not yet named and doesn’t have a notch in Ama’s calendar tree(a tree with notches to mark years) because there is still a very big chance that he will die, like the four other children Ama has had.
 * ’’’Baby brother’’’

Gita was one of Laksmi’s best friends in the village, but she had to go away to work for a rich family as a maid, the same thing Lakshmi is told she is going to do. It is probably true that Gita was a maid because her family had bought many things from money she sent back. Lakshmi misses her friend, and says “Inside Gita’s family’s hut, it is daytime at night. But for me, it feels like nighttime even in the brightest sun without my friend.” Page 4, Before Gita Left
 * ’’’Gita’’’

Tali is Lakshmi’s goat, who is her only friend when Gita leaves. Tali even follows her to the school classroom. Lakshmi must leave Tali behind when she goes. Lakshmi also grew her own cucumbers that she named. She takes very good care of them, but one day she finds them missing and realizes that her stepfather sold them and kept the money to gamble away.
 * ’’’Tali and the cucumbers’’’

The boy who comes to the House with tea for the girls is nice to Lakshmi and even gives her a cup of tea and a coke without making her pay. Eventually he has to go on another route through the city and wont see them any more. Lakshmi tells him just before he leaves to send a message to the American who left the card for her.
 * ’’’The Tea boy or the street boy’’’

“the government woman” is a woman who comes to the back door of the House every month with condoms for the girls. Still, she dosent try to help them at all.
 * ’’’the government woman’’’

Bajai Sita owns the store in Lakshmis village.
 * ’’’ Bajai Sita’’’

(The following is a few sentences that could be added to the plot summary) Mumtaz locks her in her room for almost five days with no food or water and eventually drugs her and forces her to be with the men. After a while Lakshmi moves into a room with the other girls and the new life becomes normal for her.

The entire time she is at the House, Lakshmi and the other girls are lied to and threatened about what will happen if they try to run away or do something they aren’t supposed to. One of the stories that passes between the girls is that the Americans will come and say they are trying to help, but they will make the girls walk naked in the streets. This is probably just a lie that Mumtaz told the girls, but they still believe it and hide whenever the police or Americans come to search the house.

Background
To research for Sold, author Patricia McCormick travled and interviewed people who had been or where part of the so-called system. This "system" works by "native girls believing they are going to get jobs," when really they end up "in brothels with no way to escape." To observe more about the system and interview the people in it, McCormick travled to "a shelter in Kathmandu and travled into a village in the foothills of the Himalaysas The village that Lakshmi lives in is based on the places that McCormick travled to. She also talked to girls and women in Calcutta's "red-light district," where she learned about the many horrors of the system from two teenage girls who had escaped it. The two girls came to McCormicks hotel room and spoke with her all day with the agreement that McCormick would not use their names or take thier pictures. She says "part of them became Lakshmi." McCormick also talked to some people on the other side of the system, the people who sold others into the system for profit. She interviewed one man in prison for selling his fiancee. McCormick says, "He told me, without a trace of embarassment, he wanted a motorcycle...He was utterly unconcerned about his fate; he knew he would get off in court."