The question is what is known as a “rhetorical question”. A normal question is posed to an audience because one is looking for an answer from the audience. When you ask a rhetorical question, you intend to make the audience think about the question, but are planning to answer it yourself, e.g. when Lady Macbeth asks “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” It is used in this passage as a transition between reflection on the protagonist’s situation as an individual and the issue of multi-culturalism in Australia and how it affects her.

How does the protagonist of "Looking for Alibrandi" feel about her Italian cultural identity?

My emancipation didn't happen like I expected it to.

I thought maybe I'd wake up one morning and see the light. Feel liberated from everything. Or maybe one particular incident would see me through it. But it happened while I was hysterically crying again.

It was after receiving a birthday card from Jacob which I threw in the bin. I just sat there thinking back on the year and I realized that I was emancipated long ago. It wasn’t at one particular point either, it was several. The hang-ups I once had were superseded, but not with other hangups as much as with a few sorrows.

I remembered feeling socially out of it at St Martha's, yet when the fiasco of the walkathon happened, I realized I wasn't. I thought my birth circumstances were a cross I’d bear for the rest of my life, but what had happened between Nonna and Marcus Standford made me realize that it had never been my cross. I had only made it mine.

And the different cultures thing?

Well, I'm not sure whether everyone in this country will ever understand multiculturalism and that saddens me because it’s as much part of Australian life as football and meat-pies. But the important thing is that I know where my place in life is. It’s not where the Seras or the Carlys of the world have slotted me.

If someone comes up and asks me what nationality I am, I’ll look at them and say that I'm an Australian with Italian blood flowing rapidly through my veins. I’ll say this with pride because it’s pride that I feel.

Through much of the earlier part of the story, the protagonist is uncomfortable with her identity as a girl from a poor Italian family. Gradually, as she matures, she realizes that her family background is not a “cross to bear” and does not in any way...

What does the protagonist compare multiculturalism to in Looking for Alibrandi? What language technique is used for this comparison?

My emancipation didn't happen like I expected it to.

I thought maybe I'd wake up one morning and see the light. Feel liberated from everything. Or maybe one particular incident would see me through it. But it happened while I was hysterically crying again.

It was after receiving a birthday card from Jacob which I threw in the bin. I just sat there thinking back on the year and I realised that I was emancipated long ago. It wasn’t at one particular point either, it was several. The hang-ups I once had were superseded, but not with other hang-ups as much as with a few sorrows.

I remembered feeling socially out of it at St Marthas, yet when the fiasco of the walkathon happened, I realised I wasn't. I thought my birth circumstances were a cross I’d bear for the rest of my life, but what had happened between Nonna and Marcus Standford made me realise that it had never been my cross. I had only made it mine.

And the different cultures thing?

Well, I'm not sure whether everyone in this country will ever understand multiculturalism and that saddens me because it’s as much part of Australian life as football and meat-pies. But the important thing is that I know where my place in life is. It’s not where the Seras or the Carlys of the world have slotted me.

If someone comes up and asks me what nationality I am, I’ll look at them and say that I'm an Australian with Italian blood flowing rapidly through my veins. I’ll say this with pride because it’s pride that I feel.