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
Josie is sitting with Nonna, looking at photo albums. She wonders if when she’s old, she’ll be as obsessed with the past as Nonna is. As Josie studies Marcus Sandford’s picture again, Nonna quietly says that he loved her. When Josie asks if Nonna loved him, Nonna says she was married. Josie remarks that in her mind, Marcus exists more than Nonno does. Nonna admits that she did see Marcus again after Roberto died. After Zia Patrizia and Zio Ricardo moved to Sydney, Nonno took a faraway job so they could afford to move to Sydney, too. Nonna says she was alone for four months, including over Christmas.
As the year progresses, Josie is changing. Now, Nonna isn’t some unknowable, annoying old lady—she had a life before Josie was alive, and it was interesting and dramatic. By confiding in Josie, Nonna shows her granddaughter that she trusts her with this secret. It doesn’t seem like anyone else in the family knows that Nonna continued to see Marcus after Roberto died; Josie is the only one who sees this side of Nonna.
Themes
Josie says that at least Nonna had Marcus as a friend, but Nonna says that back then, you couldn’t be friends with men—whether they were Australian or Italian. In a whisper, Nonna says that one woman killed herself because of all the gossip. Josie is incredulous. But Nonna continues that Marcus still came to see her and even wanted her to stay with him. Nonna tells Josie about the “proxy brides,” who came to Australia to marry men they’d only seen in pictures. Some discovered that their future husbands were old. Others would have sex on the ship. Josie soaks up Nonna’s stories and wonders who Nonna actually is. She also realizes that she’s changing—she’s no longer bored by Nonna’s stories, and she thinks she and Nonna now have a good relationship.
Nonna makes it seem like she was one of a number of Italian women who were displeased with their husbands. It wasn’t uncommon, she shows, for men to misrepresent themselves, and for women to find themselves in situations where they couldn’t stand up for what they wanted. But what remains the same then and in the novel’s present is the gossip. Nonna makes it clear that cruel gossip could even kill, depending on the circumstances—something that Josie can certainly understand, given how much stock she used to put into her classmates’ gossip.
Themes
Josie listens to Nonna talk about moving to Sydney to be near Zia Patrizia, and then moving to Leichhardt. In the 1950s, Australia was changing with all its new immigrants—and Josie thinks it’s still trying to adapt to those changes today. She thinks of how far her family has come. But, Josie realizes, lots of people haven’t changed. Some don’t want to leave their insular worlds, while others can’t. Josie vows to the reader that she’s going to remember these stories from Mama and Nonna. She’ll tell her children and her granddaughter one day. Her granddaughter can try to understand her, just like Josie is trying to understand Nonna now.
Nonna’s stories help Josie figure out why Australia today is the way it is. Josie is struggling with many of the same things now that Nonna struggled with in the 1940s and 50s—just a slightly more modern version. Josie also sees now that listening about Nonna’s stories gives her important insight into who Nonna is, and how her family got to the point where it is now. Storytelling, the novel shows, has the power to bring generations together.
Themes
