Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Looking for Alibrandi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family
Identity, Freedom, and Coming of Age
The Immigrant Experience
Gossip and Appearances
Social Status and Wealth
Love and Relationships
Summary
Analysis
The next time Josie is at Nonna’s house, she “succumb[s] to the urge” and asks Nonna to show her old family photos. Nonna pulls out the album and points out her first house (a shack that she says was always dirty and full of snakes). Nonna says she hated Australia for the first year—she had no friends and Nonno worked in another town, so she was on her own a lot. Josie studies photos of Nonno. He never smiles in photos, while Nonna is smiling in every one.
The fact that Josie has an urge at all to hear Nonna’s stories about her early years in Australia shows again that she’s evolving—she’s not so self-absorbed now, which is a sign that she’s growing up. As Josie notes how unsmiling Nonno is in all the photos, she develops more empathy for Nonna. Not only was she mostly alone; the one person she had in her life seems cold and unfeeling.
Themes
Josie turns the page and asks who the smiling, brown-haired man is in a photo. Nonna gets an odd look on her face and says he’s Marcus Sandford, an Australian and her first friend in this country. They met when Nonna went to the post office and the letter from home included the news that Nonna’s parents died of the flu. Nonna broke down in the middle of the post office, and Marcus picked her up and took her outside to calm down. They spoke to each other though they couldn’t understand each other, and then Marcus took Nonna home. After that he’d bring her things from town, help her in the garden, and teach her English.
Josie doesn’t ask questions or express curiosity about Nonna’s odd look, but this is an indicator that Marcus Sandford might be more important than Nonna initially lets on. The way that Nonna and Marcus interact with each other to begin with suggests that friendship is possible in all sorts of conditions, even when two friends don’t speak the same language. It simply takes showing the other person care and concern. And, as Marcus demonstrates, it means treating immigrants as people, not as invaders who are fundamentally different.
Themes
But Nonno was jealous, Nonna explains. Nonno trampled the garden that Marcus had helped Nonna start. Josie realizes that Nonna was afraid of Nonno—and still is, even though he’s been dead for more than a decade. Nonna continues that not long after, other Italians moved to Australia and she had a community again. But even then, people gossiped about her because she and Nonno weren’t having babies. People always asked what was wrong with her.
Again, Josie continues to develop empathy for Nonna as she discovers how scary and difficult Nonna and Nonno’s marriage was. And as Nonna describes the gossip she suffered even once she was part of an Italian community again, it shows that Nonna’s life in Australia has never been easy. She hasn’t fit in, though she’s made a point to try.
Themes
Nonna says that one day, she came home and found her little sister Patrizia on her doorstep—married to Josie’s Zio Ricardo and six months pregnant. Josie says she’s always admired Zio Ricardo, since men as good and strong as him don’t seem to exist anymore. Nonna warns Josie that the 1930s and 40s weren’t the “good old days.” There was war, women died in childbirth, and doctors were often ineffective or too expensive. Josie doesn’t listen to Nonna’s next story. Instead, she thinks of how lonely Nonna was as a young woman. Josie doesn’t think she could handle living like that—and she hopes she’ll never have to live someplace where she can’t communicate with her neighbors.
Josie seems to idolize Zio Ricardo, believing that he represents a desirable way of life that doesn’t exist anymore. But Nonna instead makes the case that every time period has its flaws—the 30s and 40s may have produced Zio Ricardo, but that doesn’t mean life wasn’t still difficult. Though it could be considered rude that Josie doesn’t listen to Nonna’s next story, the fact that Josie stops to think about how lonely Nonna was nevertheless shows Josie growing up and developing empathy.
Themes
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