NOVEL STUDY RESPONE – LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI
Introduction:
Looking for Alibrandi is a true story focused on and about Josephine Alibrandi who finds many struggles of day to day life to fit in, it displays Josie in the novel to struggle with finding her own identity in society, it is her last year of school so it makes it even tougher. It’s set in Sydney’s eastern suburbs where there are many people who have cultural backgrounds, for Josie she’s of an Australian-Italian decent. Josie’s father never knew his daughter, she always dreamt of what he’d be like. She got a scholarship in an expensive private school to get a good education that she could barely afford and of course it was full of rich Australians who’s were snobs to what they called Wogs. Throughout this intriguing novel she learns to cope with cultural differences from everyone else and how her life changes. She wants to be free “I’ll run. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australian and not as an Italian and
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She wanted to get away from her embarrassing and old Italian background family and become herself. I believe that Josie has a lot of issues with self-worth and pride, she doesn’t really want to fit in as something she wants to free, that’s her choice but when people are trying to force things upon her and prohibit her freedom then it can cause problems for not only herself but her friends and family. Throughout the story you see how this changes and she becomes to find her own identity. It is important that teens should feel as if they fit in to society and feel comfortable before they reach adulthood. This movie really tells the audience, mainly teenagers, to just be themselves and it will all work out in the end. It gives them hope and courage to carry along the journey to find their identity until they are fully comfortable in their own skin.
By Jadyn Elsworthy
Word count: 915 with
Although she has family there, she also feels like she is out of place and compares living on the streets in Edmonton to living near the rez. She feels as though she doesn’t fit in there and that she had to protect herself. In Grandetowne and more specifically at the Christly School, even though she is a smart student, she feels out of place with the other girls. She doesn’t have a lot of money compared to the other girls and the nuns don’t show any respect to her cultural background. She thinks of what the generations before her had to go through in residential school and continues to hold on to what she has left of her culture.
She also has to deal with not having a father and how that has affected her school life. “I think I had it worst. My mother was born here so as far as Italians we weren’t one of them. Yet because my grandparents were born in Italy we weren’t completely Australian.” P 7 This
Topic #3 Thesis Statement: In the book The Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese, Amelia One-Sky’s life was ultimately shaped through the entanglements of discrimination of the aboriginal people and poor childhood development which lead her to a life of homelessness. Introduction: With the economic and social deprivation of substandard housing (p.149) One For The Dead had lost her parents at a very young age, this then leads her and her brothers to residential schools where she loses her younger brother, Harley. The mingling of events eventually pulls Amelia One Sky and the rest of her brothers into socially inflicted traumas of residential schools, causing her to hear “Voices of the dead” (p.12) and her brothers rebelling with “rage and resentment”
‘How are the differences between Australian and Italo-Australian culture displayed by Marchetta and what effects do they have on the protagonist Josie?”
In the beginning, Sophie introduces herself in the story as a nerdy, outcasted teenage girl, “I always thought of myself as a free-floating one-celled amoeba, minding my own business. The other kids at school were all parts of a larger organism. . . Not particularly noticed, definitely not appreciated, just an amoeba swimming around aimlessly” (9). Sophie feels as if she does not belong where she grew up, she has always felt like she was on the outside. Her father, a drug dealer and felon, left her mother when she was first born. Because of her extreme self-esteem issues, Sophie blames herself for her father leaving. She recalls what she believes happened when she was born, “When Mom was a teenager, I started making her belly fat. And then my dad left. And then I was born too soon. And he came back to get us. But I was
Josie adapts to changes in a relatively short period of time which allows her to thrive in many different areas. In the prologue, the readers learn that the life-altering move to the reservation was basically just sprung upon Josie and her opinion was seemingly disregarded: “That's how it was when we lived in the city, where almost everyone was like me -- I blended in. Then with one move, I became a white girl, painted like a picket fence -- plain as day, whiter than white” (Prologue). By no means was Josie's life pre-reservation easy, her economic/social status placed her and her mom as “white trash,” yet it was easier in the big city then on the res. In the city everyone looked like her, everyone talked like her, and did similar things, but on the res no one looked like her. On the reservation she was the outcast, different from everyone but that didn't stop her from making friends or going to school. Josie's mom, Lenore is the one who has more trouble adapting to the new surroundings, and this results in Josie taking the lead in terms of upholding the family image and making new family friends. At the end of the book, Josie sounds as if she has lived on the reservation her whole life: “June 21 was mom and Martin’s first anniversary… An open invitation, to the family, and anyone else who wanted to attend… ‘And I want you to invite your friends, I want everyone to come” (Chapter 17). At the beginning of the book, Josie
‘Looking for Alibrandi’ “Looking for Alibrandi” demonstrates a realistic representation of youth identity and the factors effecting adolescence. Josie faces issues that an adolescent teen would, struggling to cope with teenage existence. She lives with her single mother and attends a prestigious private school, where her snobbish classmates mock her Sicilian heritage. She contends with the dramas of teen romance, divided between John and Jacob.
In the film Skin and the novel Looking for Alibrandi, there are many main and important themes such as family, discrimination. However, the idea that I can easily feel and see in both of them is identity crisis, which is the theme to make these stories successful. The main characters of each story – Sandra and Josie always ask themselves “Who are they?” , “Where is the right place for them in this society?”. Because of the struggle for their identity, both women have to deal with many problems in their life.
In the text author discusses a person’s multiple identities, but I think it’s not so much that a person as multiple identities, but that a person chooses to use different aspects of their personality at times. For example, I wouldn’t interact the same with a male co-worker then I might with a female co-worker. The environment hasn’t changed but I chose to interact in a different way. Another example would be when an adult is interacting with a child. A person does not and in my opinion, should not interact with a child in the same way as you would with an adult. I don’t believe using different aspects of your personality at different times is dishonest or wrong. A person is simply utilizing the traits of their personality as they deem appropriate for the atmosphere or environment around them.
All around the world people struggle with a sense of self-individualization, which is the internal battle each person has to face in order to discover ones true identity. The quest to find oneself is a difficult and lengthy endevor that can take a lifetime to accomplish. Some if not most people never reach a point where they can truly face who they truly are. In the Novel The Namesake by Lahiri, identity is illustrated by intensely examining the importance of ones background, name and culture. The main characters in the story try to uncover the reasoning behind their lineage, which they belive will lead to discovering the answer destiny in life. Playing on this belief the Ganguli’s sustain the element of traditions with them and practices
Josie's father, Michael Andretti has an important contribution to Josie's changing perspectives. At first meeting he was not a great priority to Josie as she did not really think about him. When Josie's mother tells her about Michael Andrettie's arrival, she reacts to the issue calmly as she says "It's not a big deal, we can handle it". Her mother is worried and nervous and Josie is not really concerned at the time. Josie later says sarcastically that " This year is just starting off perfectly You know I never thought for a second that I'll actually meet my father, they all seem pretty useless to me". This is said at the school gate where the focus is on the fathers who drop their daughters at school. Josie is confused and is angry as she says "At St. Martha's, its all about money, prestige, and what your father does for living". This creates contrast between what is important at her school and what Josie has in her life. She is at first angry at her father and she's annoyed to see him get close to the family. She ironically says "Who does he think he is? Part of the family?" Josie confronts her father about her existence; she wants him to take notice of her. She says "be rude, or be angry but don't pretend I'm not here", her tone of speech is very discourteous and through this she expresses her feelings very clearly. The
Joyful Strains is a collaboration of short memoirs written by a group of expatriates about their experiences moving to Australia, and the struggles they faced that shaped them into the people they are today. Deborah Carlyon moved to Australia from her birth country of Papua New Guinea when she was 12-years-old, and has written the story ‘Hidden by the Dream’. Paolo Totaro moved from Italy to Australia when she was only a child and has contributed to the book with her short story ‘Pointing North’. Joyful Strains follows the authors as they explain how they navigated the process of finding a sense of belonging in Australia and establishing their own identities.
Since his stepfather is “God’s minister,” John, subconsciously, links religion to Gabriel, whom John sees as a brutal, heartless father. John makes it clear that he can’t wait “for the day when his father would be dying […so he] would curse him on his deathbed” (27). However, John is a result of a Biblical, religious education, which explains why he fantasizes to follow the steps of Biblical figures. Although John sometime sees himself in his teachers’ praises and (liberal, White) New York, his identity is trapped by remaining an outsider to his family, his school, and to the city, which makes religion his last resort—a resort that makes him uncomfortable. (Word Count:
Antoinette experiences a disorientation of identity and individual existence. This drops Antoinette in between two cultures but she can't fully identify with any
The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee is an incredible story about the transformation and life experiences of a Panjabi girl from India. The life of Jyoti is told from her point of view when she is twenty-four years old, and pregnant with the baby of Bud Ripplemeyer, a crippled banker who is more than twice Jyoti’s age. During the span of two months in Iowa, Jyoti narrates her biographical experiences in Punjab and in America as she strives to become independent. Jasmine illustrates that when one’s relationships go through changes, it will impact one’s identity.