Looking For Alibrandi By Melina Marchetta

‘Looking for Alibrandi’ is a young adult novel written by Melina Marchetta. It is a story about seventeen year old Josephine ‘Josie’ Alibrandi on her journey to finding herself. An inspiring idea in this novel is culture; the ignorance towards it, the restrictions because of it and trying to identify with one. The idea of culture is inspiring as it helps the audience to understand Josie’s feelings towards her ethnic background.

In this novel, Josie deals a lot with her Italian culture. As a middle class Italian girl attending a wealthy, upper class school, Josie often has to face the ignorance of those around her regarding her culture. As she lacks the money, only being able to attend the school on an English scholarship, many people look

down on her for more than just her illegitimacy. It doesn’t quite help a girl from her class, Carly, describes the Italians as wogs, a discriminatory term to describe an immigrant, even going as far as addressing her illegitimacy by saying that she was “more than a wog”. The girl struggles with these people throughout the entirety of the book, however, it is clear that she doesn’t let her Italian background hold her back, and she sets aside her differences from all other members of society to be her own self, eventually completing accepting who she is.

Pride is an essential part of culture, but would not be present without the strict guidelines made by people belonging to it.

Josie lived under the watchful eyes of Christina, Nonna Katia and the whole of the Italian community around them. However, Josie clearly thinks that her culture is horrible and all the traditions that come with it are honestly just a bother. The book features one significant event from the Italian culture known as ‘Tomato Day’. She finds Tomato day a complete embarrassment and hates everything to do about it when she talks about it in the book. “If anyone ever found out about it I’d die” is a line from the book in how Josie expresses her embarrassment and disdain for the day in which their family comes together and tells stories. Her complete lack of pride also bothers her family, as her grandmother asks her, “Where’s the culture?” after she suggested they go and buy tomato sauce instead of making it by hand. The book illustrates the pride as a major point in conflict in her daily

life.

The issue of growing up in a place with totally different culture to the one you practise at home is one that Josie has to go through. Identifying with a culture became harder for her as she struggles to understand where she fits into the Australian society. Being born out of wedlock after her mother got pregnant at only seventeen, she is considered illegitimate by everyone. While she has a family from an Italian background, the Italians won’t accept her to be one as the same as them, and the Australians grew up with believe her to not be part of them either. This affects her greatly as she is conflicted over who she truly is.

Conclusion

Melina Marchetta helps convey many important ideas about culture to all of the readers of her book.

By emphasising on points such as the problems in the real world with people being ignorant and careless about your culture, even going as far as using discriminatory phrases to mock you, and the cultural pride everyone should wear on your chest yet many fail to be able to be proud of their culture as well as the reminding to stay true to yourself, no matter where you are, and who is trying to influence you, Looking for Alibrandi reminds all its audience the simplicity of our background and our culture. It inspires us to understand Josie’s feelings towards her ethnicity, and it inspires us as to how we should understand our own cultures. The book reminds us that no matter how far we run, we will never be able to escape our roots. It would be easier to just accept and embrace it instead of trying - and failing to escape

it.