Sweatshop Chapter Summaries

Short Synopsis:

This novel is about the hidden reality of innocent children sold to wealthy sweatshop owners by their parents in order to pay off family debts in modern day Pakistan. Iqbal, an actual child slave, was only four years old when his father sold him to a carpet weaver for $16 in the 1980’s. This novel is told through the eyes of a young female slave, Fatima who works with Iqbal at a carpet factory, also known as a “sweatshop”. She reveals the terrible reality of being a child slave in Pakistan, working long hours, crammed into a dark, dingy, and humid room with no fresh air, with dozens of other young child slaves. These children are either orphans or have been sold by their parents to wealthy businessmen to pay off family debts.

The author made me care and the rest of my group because child labor affects the lives of roughly ¾ of the child in undeveloped country worldwide. These children have been forced to give up school, sports, their play time and even their families and homes to work under dangerous, harmful and abusive conditions. And at the same time when we are reading this book I have all these things like I am not forced to go child salivary, I, fortunately, have school, I get to play, and whenever I read this I think about how unfortunate these children are. Many children are engaged in paid and unpaid forms of work worldwide but are classified as child laborers when the work is considered hazardous or the child is underage.The cycle of poverty is one of the largest contributing factors to child labor. Child Labour is closely linked to poverty. India and Pakistan being a thickly populated country. A large section of people being compelled to live below poverty line. A large numbers of children in India and pakistan are engaged as laborers to earn some money for their family’s

“My dad was going to send one of my sister.. But i said i will go…… i was only 4 or 5 that time”. This is a way of children being robbed of their childhood because at the age 4 or 5 you should be let free in the home playing with toy. This quote also connects to the theme Anyone can make a difference even if it’s not a huge change and doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, rich or poor, and educated or not. Because these children have no education. “ There was no time for school”. These children were not rich “ I thought I'd like to go to the cinema someday. My father and mother had never been, nor my brothers and sisters. They were too poor.” And the most important thing was they were just children “When parent are in debt, they "rent," or bond, their children, who can be as young as four or five, to work for "masters”. At the end these children had nothing to start with and now look where they impacted our