Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, published in 2024, is a lightly illustrated work of middle-grade contemporary fiction that follows the adventures of Magnolia Wu and her new friend, Iris, as they work together to track down the owners of singleton socks left behind in Magnolia’s parents’ New York City laundromat. During their quest to reunite socks and owners, Magnolia and Iris grow close. They learn valuable lessons from the people they connect with in the city around them, helping them to see the world in new ways. Through the gift of Iris’s friendship, Magnolia develops a new confidence and takes a more active role in shaping her own life. When their friendship is temporarily threatened, Magnolia shows how much she has grown by finding a way to heal the rift.

Magnolia Wu is author Chanel Miller’s first work of fiction for young people. Before writing this novel, Miller was already a bestselling author of a work of nonfiction, written for an adult audience: Know My Name: A Memoir. This grueling story recounts Miller’s experiences as the survivor of a campus assault and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the California Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Magnolia Wu has also won or been nominated for several awards, including its selection as a 2025 Newbery Honor book. 

This study guide references the 2024 Philomel hardcover first edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, bullying, gender discrimination, child abuse, and emotional abuse.

Plot Summary

On her tenth birthday, Magnolia Wu meets a new friend. Iris Lam comes to the laundromat that Magnolia’s parents run in New York City. Iris’s mother, Ms. Lam, is an old friend of Magnolia’s mother, Mrs. Wu. The Lams have just moved to New York from Santa Cruz, California, and the two mothers want their daughters to meet. Magnolia feels glad to meet Iris since she’s a little bored and lonely. Iris misses her old home in Santa Cruz and doesn’t know if she likes New York.

Magnolia shows Iris the board where she pins up single socks that have been left behind by customers. A customer yells at Mrs. Wu that the sock board makes the laundromat look sloppy and dirty. Ashamed, Magnolia tries to get rid of the socks, but Iris secretly rescues them. The next day, she tells Magnolia that she has a plan for the socks. Magnolia will track down their owners, and Iris will help her. While they are searching for the socks’ owners, Magnolia will show Iris around the city.

The first sock they choose is a black-and-white checkered sock. They guess that it might belong to a customer called Carl, who plays chess often. In the park where he plays chess, Carl tells them that the sock is not his, but they see a piece of newspaper with a crossword puzzle on it and guess that perhaps Lisa, a customer who loves crosswords, might be the owner, In the subway station where Lisa works, they learn that she is not the owner either. She asks them to run an errand to HAIR, a barbershop near the laundromat. Magnolia has never been inside this shop, but she knows the owner’s son, Luis, from school. She has a crush on Luis and feels delighted when the sock turns out to be his.

The second sock is a pink knitted sock. Magnolia and Iris check a local diner whose owner knits his own coasters and the knitting store where the pink yarn is sold. They discover that someone named Nala is probably the creator of the sock, but they get no clues about who Nala is. When they return to the Wu apartment to clean up after a meal shared with Magnolia’s Auntie Mei and cousin Alan, they discover a piece of surprising information: Alan is secretly Nala. Because his parents pressure him to spend his time studying and practicing the piano, he’s been hiding his fun, creative side. His dream is to be a fashion designer. Magnolia offers him her full support, and the two cousins share a happy hug.

Next, Magnolia and Iris visit a local plant shop to tackle the mystery of a sock with flamingoes on it. The owner, Rosa, does not know whose sock it is—but she does share some information about Magnolia’s father that Magnolia does not know. Mr. Wu was once in charge of a large dahlia plantation, and he knows everything there is to know about plants. When Iris and Magnolia stop to question Zito at his pizza shop, he tells Magnolia that her mother’s English name, Shirley, comes from her love of a drink called a Shirley Temple. In exchange, Magnolia tells him something he does not know: her mother’s Chinese name is Xiaohua, but she does not use it because she is afraid Americans will not know how to say it. Zito tells her that Mrs. Wu has every right to be called Xiaohua if she wants to, and he practices saying the name several times.

A boy from Magnolia’s school, Aspen, comes into the pizza place. He often bullies Magnolia, and today he criticizes her drink for being girly. Zito and his staff point out that there is nothing wrong with being girly. When the girls are leaving, Aspen throws a napkin at Magnolia. Inside is a note that leads her and Iris to a bookstore, where Aspen is waiting. They learn that the flamingo sock belongs to him. They also learn why he loves flamingoes. His father is constantly calling him mean names and telling him bad things about himself, but he knows that flamingoes only turn pink because they eat a certain kind of shrimp. Aspen has decided that he will be a flamingo who refuses to eat the shrimp—his father’s critical ideas—so he will not change into someone who believes these things about himself.

During Magnolia and Iris’s next adventure, they end up getting into a fight. Magnolia is unkind when Iris tries to share how much she is missing California and the ocean. Later, Iris feels jealous of Magnolia’s attempts to make friends with a girl named Jessica. Magnolia is embarrassed when Iris points out that Magnolia was lonely before meeting Iris, and she claims that she does not need Iris. After Iris leaves her sitting in the lobby of Jessica’s building, Magnolia regrets her words and worries about how to make the friendship right again. Two people that Magnolia meets that day—a dog walker and a doorman—give her good advice about fighting with friends and making up.

When Magnolia goes to Iris’s mother’s gym the next day to apologize to her friend, she sees racist graffiti spray-painted outside. Iris is very upset, and she tells Magnolia that she feels as if she has no real home. Magnolia asks her to come to the laundromat in an hour: she has a plan to help Iris feel more understood and comfortable in New York. At the laundromat, Magnolia begins turning a supply closet into an impromptu beach. Her mother gets irritated at the mess, and Magnolia breaks down, accusing her mother of making everything but Magnolia a priority. She pours out her feelings about Iris and the graffiti, and Mrs. Wu surprises her by closing the laundromat so that she can sit down with Magnolia and comfort her. Mrs. Wu helps her create her beach and reminds her that both of her parents love her very much.

When Iris arrives, she’s touched by Magnolia’s gesture. She tells Magnolia that she was jealous of Jessica and explains why she and her mother left California: her father’s temper made Ms. Lam afraid that he would hurt Iris, so they moved to New York to get away from him. Magnolia tells Iris how much she means to her, and the two make up.

When the two friends embark on the final sock mission, Jessica joins them. They reunite a coconut-scented sock with Mr. Ishioka, their school’s janitor. Along the way, they run into Luis and Aspen, and after Mr. Ishioka shows them all how he polishes the school’s floors by skating on them in his socks, the five children spend the afternoon together, pretending to be figure skaters. Magnolia is happy and grateful that her friendship with Iris has led to her make even more friends. That evening at the laundromat, Magnolia learns that Alan has stopped by to show her parents one of his knitted creations: Magnolia and Iris’s support has given him new confidence in his artistic abilities. Magnolia realizes that she has learned so much about the people in her life in a short time and that below the surface everyone is more complex than she once realized.