Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All

The novel’s New York City setting symbolizes the gift of a wider perspective. This huge, diverse, and bustling city emphasizes the opportunities to learn and grow that people encounter when they are open to the world around them. When Magnolia spends most of her time in the laundromat, she is lonely and bored and often focuses on what her life is lacking. Iris inspires her to get out into the city, return the lost socks, and prove to Iris how great New York City is.

Magnolia’s adventures with Iris lead her to deepen her connections to her neighborhood: people who are old and young, rich and poor, and from a wide variety of backgrounds. She learns important lessons about life—about confidence, friendship, staying open to new experiences, people’s hidden talents and hidden sorrows, and human kindness. She learns to appreciate her parents and her own life in new ways.

In Chapter 6, Jessica tells Magnolia and Iris that the delicious-looking “ice cream” they see her eating in her mother’s television commercials is not actually ice cream—it’s mashed potatoes dyed to look like ice cream because real ice cream melts under the hot lights used in filming. Magnolia is appalled and surprised. She realizes that appearances can be misleading. The mashed potatoes symbolize a larger lesson for Magnolia: just like the mashed potatoes, people are often different than they seem on the surface. Magnolia’s parents are not just the hard-working, no-nonsense people she sees every day. Her father is also the very kind man who eased Aspen’s fears, an expert with plants who once supervised a vast flower plantation. Her mother was once a mischievous child who grew into a young woman who loved Shirley Temples. The symbol of the mashed potatoes underscores the gift of a wider perspective, providing a concrete example of the importance of looking beyond first impressions or assumptions to accurately understand the world.