Asha I Only Desired What My Friends Had

A novel that deals with an extremely sensitive and topical issue: Teen prostitution, coercive or voluntary. It talks almost exclusively about the coercive form of the phenomenon; rightly so since it is the dramatic part and involves very young, unwitting victims, and must be opposed with all our might. However, we must not forget that there is also the voluntary aspect. A phenomenon that is much more widespread than we think among today's teenagers who, in order to get recharges, latest generation cell phones, rather than a designer dress or money, choose to sell their bodies... consciously. And not always, as in the case of the protagonist, driven by the family's precarious economic conditions. This is also to be countered, upstream. In the book, the two aspects intersect, proceeding in parallel, developing a dense, seamless, compelling plot. Asha is the third child of an Albanian immigrant family, in Italy for 20 years. Decent, honest, hard-working people, well integrated into the social fabric, but barely making ends meet. Seeing her friends dress well, have beautiful homes and everything they desire, while she is forced to wear shabby clothes and live in a dilapidated house, makes her feel envious. Drawn by a friend, blinded by the prospect of having what her parents cannot give her, she runs away and decides to sell her body to get them. This choice, however, while allowing her to fulfill all her desires, soon makes her regret not being able to have a life as a normal teenager, cultivating friendships, laughing, joking, falling in love. Sold to a criminal organization, segregated and forced to their will, she escapes several times, but is always found. Discovering that she is pregnant, unable to find the little boy with whom she conceived him, she attempts to make a middle-aged man, whom she met during one of her escapes, believe that he is the child's father. Having failed in this attempt as well, tired of running away with those criminals who give her no respite, she decides to end it all. The discovery of her suicide note, which she leaves on a coffee shop table, kicks off the story.