The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 13 January 2009

Arranged marriages? For cash, beer, and meat? In America?

Ayep. At least, according to this CNN report, it looks as if someone in California sold a 14-year-old daughter to an 18-year-old boy.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/13/daughter.for.sale/index.html

Now, the tricky part of this is that apparently in their homeland -- the Mexican state of Oaxaca -- this would be a normal arrangement. But in California, well, they've managed to break a few laws.

And then there's the reason that this all became public. Apparently the boy didn't pay up, and the father contacted police to get his daughter back, since the boy broke the contract. Whoops.

Your exercise. Pick one of these characters, and walk us through the events. Try to help us understand the way that the Oaxacan community might look at this, and how the surrounding Californians respond. What's the police chief doing in the middle of all this (aside from wishing that he didn't have to try to sort it out)? Or perhaps you'd like to do it as a courtroom drama -- imagine the judge looking at the laws, looking at the human drama, and trying for justice?

I'll bet Shakespeare would have fun with it.
So write.

The wedding march? Dum - dum - te - dum.