new record: 2 days

I may have caught up with my reading plan! Just finished The Road of Lost Innocence in two days. So it's a quick read, but I am feeling good about myself. :)

That said, much of it was difficult to read. Somaly Mam has an organization in Cambodia (and now in surrounding countries) rescuing and restoring women and children in the sex industry. This was her own story of being sold into a brothel as a child, the abuse and violence she suffered, and how she used her experiences to help other women and girls with her same plight.

It was good to learn more about the beginnings of her foundation and what they are doing in this region of the world, and though I'm familiar with the industry and the violence and exploitation, it's still hard to read the terrible and unbelievable stories of little girls being sold by their parents into prostitution, their virginity being sold, and even some situations where parents fight to get their kids back from the shelter so they can sell them again. In this culture, a woman's value is nothing except what profit she can bring to her family. It's still really sad for me to think about how whole cultures can hold such wrong views. As a Cambodian, Somaly can speak to this fairly and in an unbiased way. (Our own cultures have wrong views too, of course.)

It is an engrossing, quick read if you want to learn more about this situation.