At school, Josie believes that she does not fit. Why does she feel this way?

From the moment she arrived at St. Martha’s, the other girls made it clear she didn’t belong, because of her lack of wealth, her illegitimacy, and her “ethnic” background (Marchetta 14). Classmates like Poison Ivy make Josie feel like she’ll never succeed and become part of affluent Australian society, even though she’s as smart as them. Josie and her mother Christina are not fully accepted in the Italian community either, in part because of Christina’s teenage pregnancy, but also because they were born in Australian, not Italy. So Josie is stuck between two worlds, not accepted by one and rejected by the other.