WHERE WERE YOU?

Friedman, an expert on the topic of modern-day slavery, outlines the grim realities of human trafficking in this nonfiction work.

Many people assume slavery is a horror of the past, but there are more people held in bondage today than at any other point in human history. This came as a shock to Friedman back in 1991 when, while on assignment as a public health officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kathmandu, he discovered that hundreds of local girls had recently been held in sexual slavery in nearby India: “Some of the stories these victims told were so horrific that they would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” he writes. “I am still haunted by them.” So began his 30-year journey to understand the blight of the worldwide slave trade, which remains widespread not only in sex work, but also in the fishing, chocolate, electronics, and garment industries. From the brothels of Mumbai’s Kaamathipura neighborhood to Thailand-based sweatshops with workers in debt bondage, Friedman reveals the many ways in which people are enslaved in today’s world. He offers a glimpse into not only the mechanisms of the contemporary human-trafficking trade, but also the conditions that created it. The book effectively offers a survey of work in the field of countertrafficking as well as specific ways that people may take a more active role in eradicating slavery once and for all. Friedman’s deep feeling for his subject comes across in his prose, as when he describes listening to a man who’d recently escaped enslavement, requesting his help in finding his still-enslaved wife: “He grabbed my hands, and I watched as tears streamed down his face….His desperation to find his wife went right down to his soul. His entire body shook from his frustration.” It’s an upsetting read, to be sure, but the author balances such firsthand accounts of survivors with cogent analysis and concrete suggestions for ending terrible practices. Although not a lengthy book, it will substantially deepen most readers’ knowledge of the issues.

An urgent, affecting exposé of slavery around the world.