Ibi Zoboi’s American Street is about a Haitian teen navigating Detroit for the first time, while The Go-Between by Veronica Chambers tells the story of a wealthy, somewhat famous teen from Mexico City moving to Los Angeles so her mother can take a new TV job. A number of young adult novels deal with the immigrant experience. Other contemporaries include Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty, Raincheck on Timbuktu by Kirsten Murphy, and Queen Kat, Carmel, and St. In Australia, Alibrandi is one of many books published in the 1990s and early 2000s that explored coming of age, specifically for and about teen girls. In Saving Francesca, she revisits the Italian Australian community, and On the Jellicoe Road is another story of a teenager reconnecting with family members believed to be long gone.
Though Looking for Alibrandi is Melina Marchetta’s best-known novel, she’s written a number of others.
According to the most recent census data, Italian Australians make up the sixth-largest ethnic group in Australia, and Italian is the fifth most-spoken language in the country. During World War II, as Nonna and Zia Patrizia describe in the book, the Australian government forcibly imprisoned Italians out of fear that they’d conspire with an invading Japanese force. However, immigration nevertheless boomed during this period and became even more prevalent after World War II ended. These views contributed to the racism that immigrants like Nonna, who came to Australia between World War I and World War II, experienced. But then, throughout the early 20th century, European immigrants were considered “pests,” especially during economic downturns. As Australia’s government moved to shut down immigration from Asian countries and the Pacific Islands in the late 1800s, Italians and other European immigrants were considered good, necessary workers-especially since they often held difficult, undesirable jobs. Australians’ perceptions of Italian immigrants shifted over the decades.
However, prior to the completion and opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the journey from Italy to Australia took a full two months, so Australia was a less popular destination for Italian immigrants than the U.S. Looking for Alibrandi draws heavily on the history of Italian immigration to Australia, which first began in earnest in the mid-19th century.
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