Looking for Alibrandi

by

Melina Marchetta

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Themes and Colors
Family Theme Icon
Identity, Freedom, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
Gossip and Appearances Theme Icon
Social Status and Wealth Theme Icon
Love and Relationships Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Looking for Alibrandi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon

Throughout Looking for Alibrandi, 17-year-old Josie vacillates between loving and resenting her Italian heritage. She acknowledges her Italian heritage makes her who she is, gives her a support system, and offers a number of traditions that she loves and finds meaningful—but she also can’t escape the slurs that her Australian classmates use, or the fact that some of her family’s more traditional ideas seem wildly outdated. Caught between her Italian home life and her modern Australian life at school, Josie feels somewhat out of place no matter where she goes. But as Josie grows closer to her grandmother, Nonna, over the course of the novel, she comes to realize that she’s not the first member of the family to find herself caught between cultures, be the victim of prejudice, or feel unsure of how to balance her desire to celebrate her Italian identity alongside the fact that she’s also a proud Australian. Through Josie and her family, the novel shows how being an immigrant can make a person vulnerable to racism and painful feelings of unbelonging. But the novel also suggests—as in Josie’s case—that having ties to multiple places can actually widen a person’s community and strengthen their connection to both cultures.

Throughout the novel, Josie’s Italian heritage is something she both appreciates and resents: it sets her apart, but it also gives her a source of belonging. Josie focuses more on the negative aspects of being Italian than she does on the positives, in part because the negative parts make her so miserable. At one point, Josie recounts going to school as a child and having Australian girls ask if her if she was Italian. When Josie said she was, the girls informed her she was Australian—but the next day, when the girls asked Josie if she was Australian, they informed her she was Italian. Instances like this made Josie feel from an early age that because she’s Italian, she’s not as welcome in Australia as her classmates. And throughout Josie’s life, her white Australian classmates have regularly referred to her with slurs and made fun of her for being Italian. Indeed, at St. Martha’s, Josie initially feels like she’s not popular primarily because she’s Italian. But at home, Josie takes pride in many Italian traditions. Though she finds Tomato Day, the day on which she and her family members make and can spaghetti sauce, somewhat embarrassing, she also tells readers that it’s a tradition she’ll never stop observing. And Josie also leans heavily on her Italian Catholic faith and the ways in which that guides her conduct, such as by not having sex before marriage.

Josie believes that her struggle to balance two cultures is unique to her, as a third-generation Italian immigrant—but Nonna’s stories make it clear that immigrants have had to deal with the same difficulties for generations. Indeed, Nonna’s stories help explain to Josie why she experiences the racism and prejudice she does, three generations on. Nonna explains, for instance, that Italian immigrants of her generation don’t speak English well because when they first arrived in Australia, few Australians would speak with them and help them learn. And even back then, Nonna says that the few Italian immigrants formed their own communities and, in part because they couldn’t integrate into white Australian society, became very insular. For Josie, this helps illuminate why her classmates think she lives so differently from them—the Italian Australian community is historically insular. And because of this separation between the white Australians and the Italian immigrants, the two groups haven’t had many opportunities to learn about each other, reevaluate their prejudices, and create a kinder, more generous relationship.

Getting to know someone of a different ethnic group, the novel shows, can help broaden people’s worldview and dismantle any prejudices about certain ethnicities for everyone involved. Looking for Alibrandi showcases two relationships involving people of different ethnicities: Nonna and Marcus Sandford in the 1940s and 50s, and Josie and Jacob in the novel’s present. Though Josie and Jacob struggle throughout their relationship because of their cultural differences and even some moments of outright racism on Jacob’s part, Jacob eventually finds that dating Josie opens his eyes to different ways of living and different priorities. Spending so much time with someone who’s so culturally different causes him to, in Josie’s opinion, become far more ambitious—and perhaps even more importantly, shows Jacob the value in spending time with people who are different from him. Though the novel ends with Josie feeling more comfortable in her Italian identity while still able to take pride in being Australian, it nevertheless doesn’t tie up neatly when it comes to racism and immigration. Some of this has to do with the fact that Josie is well aware that Australia is still plagued by racism and prejudice, though she believes it’s improving. But she suggests that, as Jacob’s and Marcus Sandford’s relationships with Italian women highlighted, getting to know someone from a different cultural background is something worth striving for—it makes life more interesting, and it makes Australian culture on the whole richer.

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The Immigrant Experience Quotes in Looking for Alibrandi

Below you will find the important quotes in Looking for Alibrandi related to the theme of The Immigrant Experience.
Chapter 1 Quotes

I think things got worse when I started at St. Martha’s because I began to understand what the absence of a father meant. Also there were no Europeans like me. No Europeans who didn’t have money to back them up. The ones like me didn’t belong in the eastern and northern suburbs.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Michael Andretti, Sera
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Illegitimacy isn’t a big deal anymore. But it was back then and I remember the lies my grandmother would tell me. That I did have a father who died. My mother never lied to me that way. Maybe that’s what I dislike about Nonna. That she couldn’t accept things as they were. That she probably would have been spitting out some girl’s name and saying “They don’t even know who he is” if it weren’t her daughter.

Sometimes I feel really sorry for her. I think that my birth must have cut her like a knife and I feel as if she’s never forgiven Mama. But she loves us, even if it is in a suffocating way, and that makes me feel very guilty.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Mama, Nonna Katia
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

I could picture [Ivy’s] parents at dinner with [John’s]. They’d talk about politics, the arts and world affairs. Then I tried to picture them at dinner with Nonna and Mama. Not that I have ever been ashamed of them, by any means. But what would they talk about? The best way of making lasagna? Our families had nothing in common.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Mama, Nonna Katia, John Barton, Ivy Lloyd “Poison Ivy”
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“The Australians knew nuting about us. We were ignorant. They were ignorant. Jozzie, you wonder why some people my age cannot speak English well. It is because nobody would talk to them, and worse still, they did not want to talk to anyone.”

[…]

She went on, telling me more, and as I lay back I thought it was ironic that the same ignorance that was around that back then is still here now. An ignorance that will live on in this country for many years to come, I think.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Nonna Katia (speaker)
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

I just ignored her. I’m getting good that way. Things that worried me a few months ago no longer worry me as much. I can’t say that I’m completely oblivious. The gossiping of the Italian community might not matter to some, but I belong to that community.

Sometimes I feel that no matter how smart or how beautiful I could be they would still remember me for the wrong things.

That’s why I want to be rich and influential. I want to flaunt my status in front of those people and say, “See, look who I can become.”

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Sera
Page Number: 165
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“But what’s the big deal? Everyone has babies without being married these days. Everyone lives together and gets remarried,” he said, turning on his side.

I shook my head. “I can’t explain it to you. I can’t even explain it to myself. We live in the same country, but we’re different. What’s taboo for Italians isn’t taboo for Australians. People just talk, and if it doesn’t hurt you, it hurts your mother or your grandmother or someone you care about.”

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Jacob Coote (speaker)
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Tomato Day.

Oh God, if anyone ever found out about it I’d die. There we sat last Saturday in my grandmother’s backyard cutting the bd bits off overripe tomatoes and squeezing them.

[…]

I can’t understand why we can’t go to Franklin’s and buy Leggo’s or Paul Newman’s special sauce. Nonna had heart failure at this suggestion and looked at Mama.

“Where is the culture?” she asked in dismay. “She’s going to grow up, marry an Australian and her children will eat fish-and-chips.”

Robert and I call this annual event “Wog Day” or “National Wog Day.” We sat around wondering how many other poor unfortunates our age were doing the same, but we were sure we’d never find out because nobody would admit to it.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Nonna Katia (speaker), Mama, Robert
Related Symbols: Spaghetti Sauce
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

Like all tomato days we had spaghetti that night. Made by our own hands. A tradition that we’ll never let go. A tradition that I probably will never let go of either, simply because like religion, culture is nailed into you so deep you can’t escape it. No matter how far you run.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Mama, Nonna Katia, Robert
Related Symbols: Spaghetti Sauce
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven’t. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don’t want to leave it, others because the world around them won’t let them in.

All this information I’ve gathered from Nonna and Mama, who was a child of the sixties, I’m going to try to remember it.

So one day I can tell my children. And so that one day my granddaughter can try to understand me, like I’m trying to understand Nonna.

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Mama, Nonna Katia
Page Number: 241-242
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

I wonder about life if Nonna had married Marcus Sandford. If Mama had been Christina Sandford, daughter of Marcus Sandford, and not Christina Alibrandi, daughter of an Italian immigrant. Would life have been different for her? Would she have depended on Michael so much and would she have slept with him like she did, which was more out of loneliness caused by her parents than pressured sex?

Related Characters: Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi (speaker), Mama, Nonna Katia, Nonno Francesco, Marcus Sandford, Michael Andretti
Page Number: 261
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“Oh, Jozzie, you still do not understand,” she sighed. “Could you imagine how life would be for me if I married Marcus? Could you imagine what life would be for my sister? People are cruel. They would make our lives hell. But mostly, Jozzie, tink of Christina. Back then, tink of the way my darling Christina would be treated. It is not like these times, Jozzie. She would have no one. No Australians, no Italians. People would spit at her and say she was nuting.”

Related Characters: Nonna Katia (speaker), Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi, Mama, Nonno Francesco, Marcus Sandford
Page Number: 264
Explanation and Analysis: