RedLight Children

A riveting and beautiful memoir of tragedy and hope–by a woman named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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. She suffered unspeakable acts of brutality and witnessed horrors that would haunt her for the rest of her life–until, in her early twenties, she managed to escape. Unable to forget the girls she left behind, Mam became a tenacious and brave leader in the fight against human trafficking, rescuing sex workers–some as young as five and six–offering them shelter, rehabilitation, healing, and love and leading them into new life.

Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence is a memoir that will leave you awestruck by the courage and strength of this extraordinary woman and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

Mam, Somaly. The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine. New York: Spiegal & Grau, 2008.

What should be done about trafficking in women? This book argues that the question to be asked is, ‘What cannot be done about trafficking in women?’ Exploring the complex relationship between security, subjectivity and politics, Aradau argues that security practices reproduce a politics of unfreedom and inequality. Politics out of security, on the contrary, is formulated around universality, equality and freedom. In the situation of trafficking, the equality and universality of work disrupt the specification of difference and of particularized subjectivity upon which security practices rely. Aradau emphasizes that the reduction of politics to security limits struggles for equality and freedom and entrenches divisions and boundaries in the world.

Aradau, Claudia. Rethinking Trafficking in Women: Politics Out of Security. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

This volume aims to deepen understanding of the social, economic and political contexts of human trafficking. Upon this basis, the volume considers whether an understanding of these underlying factors can inform policy discussion as well as strategic interventions regarding the fight against trafficking. The volume includes experts on trafficking issues and also gives a voice to ‘critical’ views which argue that trafficking challenges are inseparable from broader debates about human rights and migration.

Cameron, Sally. Trafficking in Humans: Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2007.

To be a moral witness is perhaps the highest calling of journalism, and in this unforgettable, highly readable account of contemporary slavery, author Benjamin Skinner travels around the globe to personally tell stories that need to be told — and heard.

As Samantha Power and Philip Gourevitch did for genocide, Skinner has now done for modern-day slavery. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, and, yes, even suburban America, he has produced a vivid testament and moving reportage on one of the great evils of our time.

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The founder and director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, Shelley exposes human trafficking as a global enterprise, one that follows different business models in different regions. The result of 16 years of travel, interviews, and academic research, this study finds that human trafficking is likely to grow in coming years.

This book examines all forms of human trafficking globally, revealing the operations of the trafficking business and the nature of the traffickers themselves.

Shelley, Louise. Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

In his 1999 book, Disposable People, Kevin Bales brought to light the shocking fact of modern slavery and described how, nearly two hundred years after the slave trade was abolished (legal slavery would have to wait another fifty years), global slavery stubbornly persists. In Ending Slavery, Bales again grapples with the struggle to end this ancient evil and presents the ideas and insights that can finally lead to slavery’s extinction. Recalling his own involvement in the antislavery movement, he recounts a personal journey in search of the solution and explains how governments and citizens can build a world without slavery.

Bales, Kevin. Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves. University of California Press, 2007.