Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” In Melanie Crowder’s free verse poetry novel, Audacity, a young girl named Clara does just this. Clara is born in
Russia into an orthodox Jewish family during the early 1900s. She and her mother work often to keep up the household and earn money to support the family; Clara’s brothers and father study Torah. To escape the pogroms that target Jews, her family flees to the United States. Clara begins work at a garment shop where the working conditions are dirty, cramped, and unsafe, the hours are long, and the pay is low. All over the city, young girls are forced to do the same, and Clara decides to put a stop to it. She helps to organize a strike that sweeps the city and mobilizes workers with the power of her words. Over the course of the book, Clara evolves from a quiet, timid girl that secretly yearns for learning and equal rights into a bright, caring teenager that struggles to choose between her
…show more content…
When Clara’s family enters America, Clara begins to get an education by attending night classes; during the day, though, she is forced to work in grueling working conditions locked up in a metal cage until sundown. During this time period, young girls in factories endured similar conditions to Clara’s shop and had to support their families with the little money that they earned. Clara grows more and more angry with the mistreatment of the women in her shop, and finally discovers the union, which seems to offer the solution: striking. Clara, though, is not ready to forsake her income, even though she deeply cares about the fight of the working girls. In the end, Clara makes her decision to fight with the other girls, and gives up her education and her family’s trust to improve the workplaces of working