Does anyone know the name of the book where the little girl grows up in the brothel?

Question

I remember reading about a girl who's mother was a prostitute and brought her daughter up in a brothel as a prostitute too. Whats the name of the book? I think it takes place a very long time ago and might have been a true story. It not memoirs of a giesha as someone already suggested.

Answer 1

Could it be Last Dance on Holladay Street?

Carbone, Elisa. 2005. LAST DANCE ON HOLLADAY STREET. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0375828966

Inspired by an old photograph of a young, black saloon girl/prostitute of the Old West, Carbone writes what life might have been like in the Old West for the young and downtrodden. Eva Wilkins is an interracial child (half-black/half-white) who is adopted by a black family and raised on a farm in Colorado. She does not know that her mother is a prostitute or “upstairs girl” in a saloon/dance hall. When her adopted parents die (one of tetnus and one of consumption) she makes her way to Denver to live with her mother. What she finds shocks her. The only place she has to go in the world is a whore house. If she stays, she’ll be expected to earn her keep by working as a dance hall girl in the evenings. She’s confused. She knows its wrong, but she doesn’t have anyone else to turn to. She meets one man (an upstanding man in the community who does not frequent the whore houses) and he promises to help her if she needs it. But he cannot offer her a home. What he ends up offering her is support and a much needed train ticket out of town. But out of town she fares no better, she tries to find her old neighbors who may or may not be willing to take her into their home, but she can’t even find them. She’s even attacked by a wild animal (I believe a panther). Sent home to Denver, she knows that several people are after her. (Matrons of whorehouses apparently liked to prey on young girls whom they thought were good potential prostitutes.) She returns to find that her mother and half-sister are in jail because of debt—the matron of the whore house has tossed them in jail. She then suddenly has a plan. While walking through town, she notices that there are a long line of men waiting to enter a restaurant where the cook is a woman. She knows how to cook, and so she gets this brilliant idea that her mother, sister, and herself can open up a restaurant and earn a living and pay off their debts to the whore house and live happily ever after. The plan worked. The men liked the home cooking.

Answer 2

You may be thinking of the story behind French filmmaker Louis Malle's 1978 film, Pretty Baby, featuring 12-year-old Brooke Shields. I remember the brouhaha in 1978 and the 'healthy' spin Shields via her Hollywood mom put on the damaging effects of making the film. Adult memoirs by Shields, however, tell a decidedly different story, this time focusing on the harmful effects of life with toxic Hollywood mom.

Answer 3

ascertain the call matches her dont get set on a acceptance you want to have others in ideas. my daughter develop into meant to be koral yet she got here out with brown hair and that i presumed koral may look more beneficial with a blonde haired lady so we had mayzie waiting incase. you want to ascertain the call matches with the look.

Answer 4

Sounds like the plot of "Pretty Baby" with Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields.... dunno if it's a book though.

Answer 5

or Gigi