Spatiality in McCormick's Sold

Human trafficking and sexual slavery have persisted for thousands of years and have affected billions of people. It is a human experience that deserves to be written about, recorded, and understood to the same degree that wars are. American author Patricia McCormick brings this issue into focus for young readers in her young adult verse novel, Sold, published in 2006. The novel focuses on a young girl named Lakshmi who is sold into sexual slavery by her stepfather, a reality most young Western readers never have to face. Using Yi-Fu Tuan’s notion of topophilia and what Robert T. Tally Jr. labels “topophrenia,” this paper examines how McCormick works to cultivate empathy in young Western readers.