Looking for Alibrandi: Meet Josephine LI – to map family dynamics Starter Open up a new PPT – you are going to use the new PPT to complete your work on Looking for Alibrandi and to use it as the basis for your assessment task. You first task is to create a concept map based on the first two chapters • Setting • Important characters • Important themes/issues Chapter 1: Who is Josephine Alibrandi? Josie introduces herself: her full name is Josephine Alibrandi and she recently turned 17. She attends St. Martha’s, lives in a Sydney suburb called Glebe, and as this is her final year in school, she’s gearing up for the HSC (High School Certificate) tests. The HSC determines whether students will be successful or not. But for Josie, the HSC isn’t her biggest problem. She has lots of problems, but Mama naively tells her not to worry. She and Mama live in the lower-class part of Glebe, in a two-story house that Mama owns. Josie and Mama have a good relationship; one minute they’re fine and the next they’re screaming at each other. Her Mother: Christina Alibrandi Josephine is born to her mother out of wedlock when she was just 16 years old. This a stigma in a traditional Catholic Italian Community. Furthermore, as he mother and Josie are Australian born they are made to feel even more like an outsiders. Mama works as a secretary and translator for doctors’ offices, which means that Josie has to go to her Nonna’s house after school. Mama is strict and Nonna is too, but Mama and Nonna fight constantly—and if Josie joins in, the fights get heated. Josie doesn’t get to go out a lot, which is a huge problem. Even worse, though, is the fact that she attends school with mostly rich students, many of whom are AngloSaxon Australians. They don’t have any problems. There are also rich Europeans, who save the money they make as laborers or grocers to send their kids to fancy schools. Her (Absent) Father Returns Mama reveals that Nonna’s guest earlier was Michael Andretti— Josie’s father. This is “mind-boggling” for Josie, because her father seems like a myth most of the time (she has never met him). Mama explains that he’s going to be in Sydney for a year, and Nonna will make herself “his surrogate mother.” Josie insists it’ll be fine, but Mama says Josie won’t be able to handle seeing him. Then, Mama says when she and Michael spoke privately, they both said they had no regrets—but he also doesn’t know about Josie. When he said he’d like to have kids someday, Mama wanted to spit at him. Josie suggests they avoid him by never going back to Nonna’s, but Mama insists Josie has to continue seeing Nonna. She says that she’s never been close to Nonna for reasons she doesn’t understand, but Nonna wants to be close to Josie NONNA Katia Nonna is Josie’s maternal grandmother and Mama’s mother. An Italian immigrant, Nonna came to Australia with her husband, Nonno, when she was a newly married teenager in the 1930s. At first, Josie knows only the broad strokes about Nonna’s life—particularly that Nonna kicked Mama out when Mama became pregnant as a teen, and only started to cultivate a relationship with Mama and Josie after Nonno’s death 10 years ago. Nonna is, in Josie’s opinion, too focused on keeping up appearances and getting into everyone’s business. She desperately wants Mama and Josie to come live with her, though she regularly criticizes Mama for the way she’s raising Josie and criticizes Josie for being “untidy” and “disrespectful. Chapter 2 Josie describes her friends and gives a brief summary about each of them. Anna Selicic is the typical Slavic-looking girl. Long blonde hair and blue eyes with that healthy redcheek look. Described as "the most nervous person I have ever known." She is the first they will protect whether being squashed in a concert or terrorised by the students of Cook High. This chapter is also very important because it's when she meets Jacob Coote on 'Have a Say Day'. Josie was impressed with his speech. By the end of this chapter, Josie talks about how she wishes she was in Poison Ivy's world and how she wanted to belong. (Poison Ivy is her academic and social rival) Then we have Seraphina. The most brazen person Josie has ever met. She can look at a person and lie her heart out. She can bitch about a person for hours and then turn around and crawl to them. She has black roots and blonde hair. Skinny yet voluptuous and tends to dress in whatever the latest rock or pop star is wearing. "The world of sleek haircuts and upperclass privileges. People who know famous people and lead educated lives. A world where I can be accepted.” Finally there's Lee Taylor "whose main objective in life is to hang out with waxheads down at the southern beaches and who thinks it's cool to come to school with a hangover." Her father is an alcoholic and once came to pick her up from a birthday party, blind drunk. Josie craves to be a part of the world of the Sydney establishment (implying her disenchantment with her own back ground). Plenary: Concept Map • Does everyone know who Josephine Alibrandi is? • Reading Chapter 3
