Summary ´ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook ☆ Somaly Mam
A portion of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.
A riveting, raw, and beautiful memoir of tragedy and hope
Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old. For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation—until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.
Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.
To learn more about how you can help fight human trafficking, visit the foundation’s website: www.somaly.org. The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
I picked this book up after seeing Somaly Mam in the PBS film based on Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. I wanted to know how she was able to grow from former trafficking victim to a head of a foundation, and this book does answer that question.
I honestly do not know if I could keep the faith in humanity that Mam apparently has. I agree with Ali. Mam should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Update Mam should not win the Peace Prize because apparently much of this book is lies. I'm knocking to down to one star (from five) because of that. Biography Sad Update but first an admission. I'm a sucker, I'm easily taken in. I'm a bookseller but I still judge books (and people) by their covers. With this book, the cover was attractive and the story the author had to tell of sexual slavery from an early age to winning Glamour magazine's Woman of the Year award (2006) was uplifting and compelling and I really thought it was something special to recommend.
Now today, I read that the book was indeed a story. Fiction. How much of it was true and how much sheer invention in order to gain publicity, sympathy and to fulfil her grandiose personal ambition of fame. Certainly she was never a child sex slave, but went to high school and sat an exam to be a teacher. Every point she made of her life in the sex industry of Cambodia that people have examined has to out be false. You can read the details in a May 2014 issue of Newsweek or for a rather horrifying overview, Wikipedia. A thoroughly discredited heroine.
But still, there is a sex industry in Cambodia, her Foundation did raise it's profile and millions to aid the victims, so ultimately didn't the means justify the end? I'm not too sure on that, what kind of harm has she done Cambodia and those who tell their tales truthfully? This is just more grist to the mill of those profit from it, or who would rather ignore it, some of whom have very 'loud' voices in charities, organisations like the UN and the media?
I'm not going to change my review. Those were my thoughts on reading the book. I'm not going to downgrade the book from 5 stars, but the author, 1 star would be generous, unless I could give 5 stars worth of contempt.
______
When I started to read the book, noting the curiously flat tone and simple language, I thought I was in for another one of the books like Slave: My True Story by Mende Nazer (a 5-star book) or even Halima Bashir's Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur (another 5-star read). I've read a lot of these books of black men and women taken by the Arabs in Sudan as slaves or victims of a civil war and I'd reached the point where I only wanted to read another one if it was going to be radically different. This one is.
Somaly Mam didn't have a good start in life and it went rapidly downhill after that with her as a young girl being sold to a 'grandfather' as a slave, a man who would repay his debts at the local shop by selling her virginity in a violent rape. The downhill acceleration picked up from there.
But then she met a man, a typical European traveller who likes working abroad and mixing with the locals and doesn't much mind if he pays for sex or not. Becoming his mistress saved her life. Eventually she forms a powerful and very successful charity to save other girls, estimated to be 1 in 40 of all the girls in Cambodia, who have found themselves with nowhere lower than death to go, and even in that, Somaly Mam is there for them. The most interesting part of the book is about her life and how it changed with this man who brought her financial freedom and gave her intellectual respect and enabled to go on to win many awards for her work.
I've seen sex slaves. My son and I were in Bangkok and went to the Patpong market, a night market. Down the centre of the broad street were stalls back-to-back selling t-shirts and jewelry and down the sides were shops and bars. The bars had their doors propped half open and inside, dancing on round tables were exquisite doll-like girls with dull, dead eyes, swinging slowly around their stripper poles as they waited for the customers to come inside.
I'm glad I've read the book, its fleshed out the statistics I've read on sex slavery in the Far East, and given life to those girls who looked like they had none or didn't care if they did or not. I wouldn't have chosen that market for my son to see at only fourteen, but then why not, he was the same age as those dead-eyed girls.
Biography This was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. We all know that prostitution and human trafficking is million dollar business that seems to continue to grow over the years. But most of us probably don’t know the extent of this problem and how it affects lives of young girls. All over the world and especially in underdeveloped/ developing countries, this is a problem that is quickly getting out of hands.
The Road of Lost Innocence is a story from Cambodia. Ms. Somaly had a very horrific life, 100 times more horrific than you can guess from the synopsis of the book. The worst phase was her life in the brothel. She describes the desperate and dirty living conditions in the low-end brothels where one girl had to sometimes service 10-15 men in one day. She says Cambodian men are very violent people, the years of Khmer regime has left a mark on them. She describes how the prostitutes are forced into the trade by their family members, by their own mothers and fathers. Poverty drives them to do this.
When she left the brothel for good, she married a Frenchman who was a social worker in Cambodia. After that she decided to use her status as a white man’s wife to help girls like her. She started a center that housed women rescued from brothels. Her center also provided health care and a way for these girls to build their life again by teaching them various skills. She also initiated an educational program which educated men into what prostitution was really like for those girls. Cambodian men seemed to treat women like commodities and she tried to speak against that by showing them that they were after all human beings.
The most shocking part was the ages of these girls in the brothels. There are as young as 5-6 year old girls. Some men seem to believe that having sex with a virgin will cure them of AIDS. To ensure that the girls were virgins, they bought in girls as young as 5.
I have such immense respect for Ms. Somaly and the work her organization is doing instead of the constant threats they get. In Cambodia, big brothels are controlled or owned by powerful people. Even policeman have a share in the brothels earnings. When the system that is supporting you is going against you, people like Somaly Mam provide a beacon of hope.
I had watched a documentary on these very children of Cambodia but I guess the documentary masked some of the horrific details. This book tells you things as they are. And even when sometimes things become too difficult to read, I just had to keep going on. If we cannot help these girls, we at least owe it to them to be informed about their fate and know that there are people like them who suffer endlessly for no fault of theirs. Biography As stated in this book by the Cambodian ex-sex slave, Somaly Mam, the prostitution business is worth $500 million a year, almost as much as the annual budget of the government. Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, etc., are countries where the sex trade is booming (and has been for decades). Young girls, sometimes as young as 5, are sold by their parents, grandparents, or caregivers to brothels and then are used as a type of credit. They work in horrible conditions, worse than one can ever imagine. Females in these countries are seen as possessions and have no voice. They are subject to violence and abuse. Men widely believe that having sex with a virgin will make them strong, live longer, and even cure them of AIDS.
This book is a difficult read but important for many reasons. Somaly Mam was sold into prostitution by her grandfather and spent many of her young years living in hell. Her stories are atrocious but she was able to escape and is now the cofounder and president of AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations), an organization that conducts raids on brothels, builds shelters, and educates/cares for the victims. Her strength and determination to help enslaved women, despite having no education or birth parents, is more than amazing...not to mention the corruption and threats by the government that stand in her way each day. The human spirit is capable of insurmountable feats. Biography This aching life story by Somaly Mam (I will respectfully prefer to address this woman as Mam now on) starts with this note:
By far the lowest statistic for the number of prostitutes and sex slaves in Cambodia is between 40,000 and 50,000. It can be expected that at least 1 in 40 girls born in Cambodia will be sold into sex slavery.
–2005 report by Future Group,
a Canadian nongovernmental organization
I am speechless after finishing this book, neither able to handle the emotions nor able to get up from my chair. This is a true tale of the extremities of pains a woman can undergo. Your heart will ache from pain, your emotions will seize, and you may cry if you are not strong enough to hold on your feelings. Some of the narrations in bold below, which I have taken from the book will give you the insights of an alien world.
I see girls in brothels with nails hammered into their skulls. That sounds unbelievable, but we have photos. Girls are chained, beaten with electric cables. They go mad. We've rescued several children from brothels who have completely lost their minds.
Being a Man, I am ashamed of the men community who made this happen in Cambodia and still existing over there. Either with his own daughter or someone he met on streets are same for them. The realities that this book brings to us filled me with anger and disgust. I come to know that how depraved the human-beings can be, such heartless and evil spirits also live on this planet.
the brothels today sell children. Often they are very young girls, just five or six years old. After the week is over, they sew the girl inside—without an anesthetic—and quickly sell her again. A virgin is supposed to scream and bleed, and this way the girl will scream and bleed, again and again. They do it maybe three or four times.
Such narrations can shake the heart of any strength. This is the naked truth and reality of Cambodian prostitution trade. These are the circumstances from which the author herself has gone through. Hats-off Mam, you are a live monument of strength and will power. I salute you.
Below is one of the heart-wrenching truths of one of a girl who was rescued by AFESIP foundation.
They scrubbed her down and plastered her with lightening cream, in order to make her a more
appetizing color. When she resisted, they beat her for several days in succession. After her first week, they sewed her up again, without an anesthetic, and sold her to another brothel. She went from one brothel to another until she was ten.
Just read the response of a Cambodian father when questioned by Mam,
Another time we were talking to a man who had raped his own daughter, a mere child. We asked him
why.
“Her mother is beautiful and she attracts all the cocks in the village. So to hurt her, I raped her
daughter, who’s pretty too.”
“But this daughter is also yours!”
“No, she’s her mother’s. It’s her mother who was pregnant. This child is nothing to me. I didn't carry her in my womb, did I?”
Today we live with all the luxuries, all requirements of our lives well fulfilled. We cannot even imagine about the pain that women go through in such parts of the world. This book opens up our eyes.
Read the present realities of today's Cambodia, this is again an excerpt from the book.
Today, school has to be paid for, and you can buy a diploma—or get one for free, if you show your teacher a gun. The justice system is for sale, and the mafias are close to power; the prostitution business is worth $500 million a year, almost as much as the annual budget of the government.
I once again salute to Somaly Mam for her courage. She is a living legend. No wonder she is called the Cambodian heroine. She is the co-founder and president of AFESIP (Acting for women in distressing situations) Foundation which seek to save, rehabilitate and socially reintegrate victims of sexual slavery in Southeast Asia. She was named CNN Hero and Glamour woman of the year.
YES, UNDOUBTEDLY, SOMALY MAM, YOU ARE A HERO.
SALUTE TO YOU Biography
(2016 update): In the interest of transparency I am leaving my original review and rating encased in amber for all to see. As it turns out, Newsweek exposed this tale as largely fabricated. To my credit, in my original review below, I did express some skepticism, but accepted the story due to widespread corroboration by others of the practices described in this book. Know, however, that I'm not pleased about being sold a bill of goods, even with overall good intentions afoot, and this is at least better than harrowing pseudo-exposes like Go Ask Alice. I think I'm a pretty smart cookie; quite able to dodge scams, but here I was reeled in, and I think it's healthy for me to own up to my gullibility publicly, and wish more people would do the same instead of trying to erase mistakes from their past with a magic wand. (--2016, EG/KR)
(The original review):
It's pretty damned hard to read this and not cry. The book is about the trafficking of young girls in the Southeast Asian sex trade, most specifically in Cambodia, and it is told from the perspective of someone who was a young victim of that trade, Somaly Mam, a true heroine who has started homes throughout the region to help girls rescued from sex slavery to reclaim their lives. The book describes harrowing, Hell-on-Earth stuff that is going on on a massive scale, right now. It's one of those books that convinces you that everything horrible that could possibly happen has happened -- and to children, no less.
Mam, a simple uneducated Cambodian mountain girl was basically orphaned in the 1970s, but because she lived in an isolated mountainous region she was spared the genocidal horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, or so it seemed. What awaited her was just as bad. The moral breakdown of the country resulting from that chaotic time did eventually lead her into a nightmare youth of domestic servitude, violent abuse, rape and eventually, sexual slavery in the filthy brothels of Phnom Penh.
By the halfway point of the book, I have to admit, I was exceedingly skeptical of Mam's story, since everything from snake pits to bucketfuls of maggots dumped into her mouth are described along with brutal rape and casual murder. I actually began to wonder if Mam was maybe embellishing things a bit; that she might have worried that mere rape would not stir the conscience of humanity, so she had to add a certain Poe-like Grand Guignol flourish to underscore the points. But the more I read of this book the more I was persuaded; the accounts of what goes on in these places have been corroborated by her own experience and those of others. In many ways, the trade has become even more sophisticated and brutal than it was in Mam's childhood, if that is even possible, which, alas, it seems to be.
Mam's voice in this book is simple, direct and powerful. I'm actually a bit put off by some of the reviewers here who say she can't write. She describes things clearly and vividly without any fancy rhetoric. So what's wrong with that? Are we not informed when we have finished? Have we not delved into a sector of the human experience that we might not have otherwise?
Even in her anger over what she went through and still sees, Mam understands that the world is not simple. The system she fights is sad and wrong and bewildering. But it's not as simplistic as evil people doing evil things. Poverty and abuse and lashing out are a vicious cycle; in some cases one can almost understand the rationalizations why the system exists as it does. In Cambodia, the general rule is to keep quiet, obey, and confide in no one; anything else is a sign of weakness. There is one law for women: silence before rape and silence after. A man is brought up in a society where women are devalued and his first intimate sexual experience is to rape a young girl in a brothel, someone lower than trash to him. He's poor, frustrated, drunk; he beats his wife and kids. The mother sells the kids, saying it'll get them out of the way of the dad and maybe in a brothel they'll fare better and find someone to marry. And a little income is generated to stave off starvation. Not to mention the bizarre myths, one being that having sex with a virgin child can ward off AIDS. Mam wants to believe that there are still pockets of decency in isolated areas, but as she finds, even practicing Buddhists have become child rapists. During the Khmer Rouge regime people detached themselves from any kind of human feeling, because feeling meant pain. They learned not to trust their neighbors, their friends, their family, their own children. To avoid going mad, they shrank to the smallest part of a human, which is 'me'. The upshot is, unless you live it, it's easy in our cushy western milieu to posture and make shocked pronouncements.
What's valuable about this too is that Mam's position as a Cambodian allows her to criticize her own people in ways that an outsider couldn't without drawing charges of cultural insensitivity or racism. Mam is merciless in her criticism of the corruption that exists within the political, business and domestic sectors of her country that allow this reality to continue.
Somaly Mam has been there, done that, and has every right to shout out and to fight, and her simple voice is powerful. This book will make you feel sick in parts; and just try to hold in your tears when you read about the Mam's rescue missions to save young girls, and her own feeling of triumph for the first time in her life when she realizes that people around the world are starting to respect and listen to her: They knew what I had done, and what had been done to me, and yet they respected me anyway--a little Phnong girl, a dirty prostitute.
As a child, Mam was so starved for love that she talked to waterfalls and trees. In the brothels, she didn't even have those. Even today, she washes herself constantly with soaps and perfumes to rid herself of the memory smell of the brothels, which never goes away.
About halfway through, I was going to give this three stars, but by the end I could not give it anything less than a top rating. What it has to say is too important.
(KevinR@Ky with amendments in 2016)
Biography Saying that I had nightmares for weeks after reading this book would be a bleak understatement! It is not hard to imagine things happening to you, when you learn what women your age, and many mostly younger than you are enduring in one part of the world or most parts of the world, for that matter.
For once, I hated my friend here to have me read this book. At one point, I broke down and that was more often. I read it in one sitting only to see how much torture and agony life can bestow on one being. Sadly, there is no limit to it.
Well, it’s reality in its crudest form and not all have the heart to take it. While I was totally disgusted to come face-to-face with such heart-shattering truths, I couldn’t stop but admire this woman immensely who has had the courage to bring the real picture aface with the world. Not many can do that!
Firstly, I never knew where exactly Cambodia is based on the map. The opening lines of this book present stunning facts and pointedly I wanted to check where this little not-much-known of a country belongs. Apparently, Cambodia is the 70th most populous country of the world, a fact I'd never have known had I not picked this book. Explains a lot of things mentioned in this book by the author.
The Road to Lost Innocence is the story not only about a little Cambodian girl but also, of those hundreds of thousands of other girls who are sold into this profession each day around the world.
The author, Somaly Mam, when still young was sold into prostitution by the grandfather she lived with who not only cheated her but also made her pay for his debts by getting her raped by a village man. She was forced to spend many years of her life living in hell in myriads of brothels amidst barbarians. She was however, determined enough to escape the damnable life with a motive to help girls and rescue girls in the profession. With this aim she started AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations), an organization that rescues girls from brothels, conducts medical treatments, educates them and provides a much better life to start with. Her courage to help these enslaved little girls and women, facing all the odds, despite having no education herself and with everything that she has gone through, is exemplary and worth a salute.
The book takes you through roads and shacks and brothels and from one city to another all leading nowhere but prostitution, monstrous rapes, crying bleeding girls, abuses and beatings and it starts all over again.
Her experiences that she elaborates through the pages of the book are not only godawful but horrendous to an extent that gets your skin crawling at the descriptions. You cannot stop wondering how cruel can a human-being get! But that’s as far as you reach, because there is no end to it.
The book is written with such sensitivity and simplicity that it gets the readers dive deep into the book as you feel her pain and suffering as your own.
That you will be
A must read by all. Not suggested to little girls/boys however since it can have real depressing effects on young minds. Biography I started reading this book and it was very engrossing only to learn that there’s a high chance much of this autobiography is fabricated. What a shame... raising awareness on sex trafficking is extremely important but human rights violations should NEVER be made up just to grab attention..
I’m putting this on-hold for now. I really wanted to read it but if it’s all lies.. Biography Ayaan Hirsi Ali said it right, this memoir is unputdownable! I read a couple pages, got interrupted, but when I picked it up again I could not stop reading. Somaly Mam's beautifully raw prose transfixed me. It held me even when my heart raged with anger as I read about the inhumanities she suffered, or even as I felt goose bumps as I imagined the torture girls like herself went through. At some point, keeping the tears back just seemed pointless.
Despite the horrors described in her book, this is not the kind of book that depresses me. Instead it's the kind that fans that inner fire in me. It reminds me of how fortunate I am, and of what I want to do with my life, and what I want to do for others.
I have read of Somaly Mam's plight years ago. I've supported her cause. And now that I've heard her story from her own words, I admire her even more. For rising against all odds, letting her own strength be the key to her own survival, and giving other women hope and a better life. Biography This book is honest, brutally, painfully honest and that is really why it can make a difference. With every page I felt Somaly Mam's struggle with the prostitution that was a big part of her past and how the very same past has propelled her forward. I feel lucky, extremely lucky, because I know had I lived the life she has I would have been completely broken and not able to stand up for righteousness like she has. She is a true hero.
In many ways the story of the little Cambodian girls sold by their very own parents, owned like commodities by different people in different points in their lives, I find those stories similar to the untold stories of little Nepalese girls in the forgotten villages of my country. It has made it easier for me to empathize with the horrors described in the book. This book shows Mam's strength as a human being and her story is one that deserves to be told.
In many ways it is not the writing or even the content of the book that will draw the reader in; it is the brutally honest way that the story is written that will leave a lasting impression. One can feel the pain Mam was feeling, see the horrors that she was encountering from her past while writing this book. The fact that she completed this book no matter what it cost her to go down the memory lane is what makes this even more commendable.
It is a must read for every person of every gender who want to know how deep the roots of sex slavery, prostitution and human trafficking go into our society. Biography