Content Warning: The source material features depictions of racism and bigoted language, racist bullying, microaggressions, racial slurs, war and related trauma, emotional distress, and suicidal ideation with themes of loss and separation. Any racial epithets are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes from the source material.

Junie Kim is a 12-year-old Korean American who lives in Maryland. She laments the start of school as her mother, a lawyer for the Department of Justice, tries to hurry her along for the first day of another year in middle school.

Junie alludes to riding the bus with the worst person in school. She describes Tobias Rodney Thornton as a racist bully; he calls her North Korean Commie. He only picks on her, leaving the Black and Latino boys alone.

The other students at the bus stop avoid Junie. She sits behind the bus driver and describes the seating hierarchy. Eighth graders, including Tobias, sit in the back, seventh graders sit in the middle, sixth graders sit in the front, and Junie sits in the very front.

Police cars line the front of the school when she arrives. She meets her friends Amy and Patrice and learns that racist graffiti targeting Blacks, Jews, and Asians was spray painted on the gym walls.