Ma'am Anna by Anna Rodriguez as told to Anthony Bunko

Ma'am Anna: The Anna Rodriguez Story; The Remarkable Story of a Human Trafficking Rescuer, Anna Rodriguez as told to Anthony Bunko. Green Bay WIS: Title Town Publishing, 2013. e-book, 199 pps.


People are not property. Tragically, there are those in the United States and elsewhere who treat others as property-- kidnapping, abducting, buying, selling, trading in human wares. The child slave who toils morning til night. The human prostitute-- we usually think of a woman or a girl but this isn't necessarily so-- in Tijuana waiting with others under the watchful cameras of their masters. A girl or a boy disappears down an alley with an adult. People in abject poverty who agree to allow their child to go "work for" a family or perhaps to migrate to a foreign country for "educational opportunities" or the promise of small amounts of money to be sent back home. Illegals who cannot afford fees to their coyotes who hike up those fees once across the border. People promised great jobs in a foreign country required to pay a holding fee. Once there, they are the ones who are held. Bonded servants. It's ugly. Oh, and the Super Bowl. I never thought of the Super Bowl as being an open market for commercial sex before reading this book.

sapphoq reviews says: It takes one human being to start a revolution. One human being and a friend to imbue that revolution with momentum. Anna Rodriguez is one such human being. Read this book. It's inspiring. Highly recommended.

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Little Princes:  One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, Conor Grennan.  NewYork:  HarperCollins e-books, 2010.  264 pps., incl. index.

https://twitter.com/conorgrennan  @conorgrennan
http://conorgrennan.com/
http://conorgrennan.com/next-generation-nepal/


Conor Grennan decided in 2004 to travel throughout the world.  His first stop was a volunteer stint at an orphanage in Nepal.  The decision to volunteer was one that dramatically changed the course of his life.

The kids in his care turned out not to be orphans.  Nepal was in the midst of a civil war.  A notorious child trafficker had gone to the rugged region of Humla-- where people were starving and the poverty level was high-- and offered to take children away to safely from conscription in the Maoist Army for a price.  He accumulated children in that manner and then led them far away from all that was familiar.  Some he sold them into childhood slavery.  Others were abandoned to the streets.  It was a profitable business for him and other child traffickers.  It still is.

Conor Grennan decided to do something about this.  He and friends went on several treks and found the families of the children that had been lost to them for many years.  He and friends educated the families to the harsh realities of what their children had gone through and then worked to reunite them with their children.  He also started an organization called Next Generation Nepal.  And there was an attractive woman in the book too that he fell in love with.

sapphoq reviews says:  This book stayed with me and haunts my dreams.  Little Princes is one book that demonstrates the brutal reality of child trafficking that still goes on today.  The children of Nepal  that Conor Grennan writes about are especially resilient and earned my utmost respect.  Little Princes gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of people effected by trafficking.  It made me want to move to Nepal.  A percentage of the profits from Little Princes goes to Next Generation Nepal.  Trafficking of children and of adults remains an international shame.  Once you've met a survivor of trafficking [and I have], something in you changes forever.