| Abstract | As awareness of sex trafficking has grown, so have news reports, documentaries, novels, blogs, and nonprofit organizations aiming to abolish it. However, these accounts largely fail to recognize the most important voice of all--the voices of survivors. Thus, the survivor memoir presents a source of information and perspective desperately needed. In this rhetorical and comparative study on two memoirs written by female survivors of sex trafficking, The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam and Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd, I argue for Mam's and Lloyd's effective use of the memoir to create an intimate relationship with the reader and make a compelling call to action. Through careful, powerful portrayals of the survivors' trauma and by connecting this traumatic experience with the global context of sex trafficking, these two memoirs epitomize the power of the genre to create a compelling call to action that is necessary to any movement of social justice. |
