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Reviewed by:
  • Audacity by Melanie Crowder
  • Elizabeth Bush
Crowder, Melanie     Audacity.     Philomel, 2015     [400p]
ISBN 978-0-399-16899-4     $17.99
Reviewed from galleys                                                  R*     Gr. 8-12

Reference to Clara Lemlich often appears when the story of garment workers’ unionization is told, and in this verse novel Crowder takes an imaginative approach to the activist’s life, reaching further back into her subject’s personal history and probing for the probable motivations that drove her to risk her and her family’s wellbeing to fight for justice in the early twentieth-century labor market. In graceful, affecting poetry, Clara shares an internal monologue, relating her early years in a Russian shtetl as the hardworking daughter, helping to keep the household running while her father and brothers pursue religious study. Their move to America in the wake of a pogrom finds her in much the same position but now chafing under the expectation of being the main breadwinner as well, working dawn to dusk in a garment sweatshop. When the concepts of socialism and unionization ignite her spirit, she takes to the union hall and picket lines, fighting to convince other young women in her situation to join the battle and ultimately seeing some measure of success in sparking a general strike. Crowder does an outstanding job of limning Clara’s inner struggles—controlling the anger she feels toward the family she begins to regard as freeloaders and trying to balance her need to survive the week with her ambition to build a future as a modern American woman: “Look around you,/ I long to say,/ next time you go to shul/ in the middle of the day./ Do you see anyone there/ but the rabbi?/ If you want this family to eat,/ get a job/ and hold what is holy/ in your mind/ and heart/ like the rest of us.” With a thorough historical note, glossary of terms, and bibliography, this will make an excellent complement to units on women’s rights and the labor movement, but it will also satisfy readers in search of a well-told tale of a fierce heroine.

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