Young Girl Sold To Be A Concubine

She called me late one night crying. My friend never cried, so something horrible had to have happened. I asked her what was wrong and she said, “I don’t know. I keep getting phone calls from my aunt and my mother. I don’t understand what is going on. My mother keeps calling me, crying and can’t say what’s wrong. She’s been doing this for two weeks. My aunt finally called and told me what was going on. I have a brother.”

I said, “I know you have a brother.” She said, “No, I have another brother…a half-brother in Vietnam.”

There was silence. I then said, “What do you mean you have a half-brother in Vietnam?”

She started crying, “My aunt told me that I am an aunt of a niece and nephew in Vietnam. My mother had a child when she was in Vietnam, before my brother and I were born.”

What transpired over the next hour was a tale I have heard repeated so many times by so many different people coming from various impoverished families in countries throughout the world. It is a story about the loss of innocence. My friend’s mother, Tei*, had been sold to another family to be their concubine so that she could produce an heir for their family.

Life as a Concubine

The last thing any free woman wants to tell their child is that they were a concubine and a prostitute. They want their children to believe they came from a good family in another part of the world, rather than hearing how they were escaping a horrible past.

Tei was thirteen when her village was visited by an old lady who was looking for young ladies of child bearing age (i.e. had already had their first menstrual cycle) to live in their home.