Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone

Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone (2022) is a novel for children by American author Tae Keller. Keller won the Newbery Medal and Asian/Pacific American Award for Children’s Literature for her book When You Trap a Tiger (2020). In Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone, Mallory “Mal” Moss is a middle school student who has anxieties about fitting in and relies on her friendship with the popular girls, Reagan and Tess, to secure her sense of belonging. When Jennifer Chan moves into her small town, Mal feels a mixture of envy and admiration for the new girl’s self-confidence and independent thinking. Jennifer believes in aliens and doesn’t care if people think she’s strange for wanting to contact them. When Jennifer runs away from home and can’t be found, Mal must contend with the consequences of her actions since she bullied Jennifer at school. The novel addresses the complexities of friendship and the importance of empathy.

Other works by this author include The Science of Breakable Things and When You Trap a Tiger.

This guide is based on the 2022 Random House Children’s Books Kindle edition. 

Content Warning: This novel addresses themes of bullying and racism.

Plot Summary

Mallory “Mal” Moss is a seventh grader at a Christian middle school in a small town in Florida. Although Mal is biracial—she is part Korean—her school and her town are predominantly white, and Mal downplays her Korean ethnicity. On the night of the school’s Christmas concert, Mal learns that Jennifer Chan, a new Chinese American girl in school, has run away from home and is missing. Mal and her friends, Reagan and Tess, have been teasing and bullying Jennifer since school began. In a recent event Mal calls “the Incident,” the three girls cornered and taunted Jennifer in the school’s bathroom, and Mal fears that this might be why she ran away. 

A series of flashbacks and excerpts from Jennifer’s journals describe how she moved to the small town from Chicago after her father passed away. The summer before school started, Mal befriended Jennifer and was impressed by how Jennifer was comfortable with her ethnicity and unapologetic about her niche hobby of searching for aliens. Jennifer said she used to research aliens with her father, and her passionate belief in extraterrestrial intelligence made her feel less lonely. She gave Mal one of her journals so Mal could learn more about the topic. Mal warned Jennifer that others at school would mock her for her interest in aliens, but Jennifer said she didn’t care. So, Mal regarded Jennifer with both admiration and envy. 

However, when the school year begins, Mal decides that she can’t risk her social status by publicly being Jennifer’s friend. Her classmates, especially Tess, spread racist rumors about Jennifer using karate to attack a boy, and on the first day of school, Reagan invites Jennifer to their lunch table to embarrass Mal about their summertime friendship. Mal insists that she isn’t close with Jennifer, and Jennifer calls them “mean girls.”

One of the school’s bullies, Pete, mocks Jennifer in front of the school and asks her to demonstrate her “kung fu moves” (110). Mal remembers her mother’s objections to the racist stereotypes about Jennifer but does nothing to stop him. Jennifer calmly corrects Pete that she knows capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts, and she performs an impressive spinning kick that astounds her classmates and wins Pete’s praise. Pete compliments Jennifer for being “different,” and both Reagan and Mal begin to resent Jennifer. Reagan, who has a crush on Pete, thinks Jennifer is cocky, and Mal’s insecurities make her think that Jennifer looks down on her. 

Reagan and Tess begin taking unflattering photos of Jennifer and sharing them privately. Mal feels uncomfortable at first, but she, too, participates. When Jennifer finds out about the photos, she confronts the girls. Reagan accuses her of overreacting, and Jennifer calls Mal a “coward.” Later, Mal mentions that Jennifer believes in aliens, and Reagan convinces her to help them teach Jennifer a lesson. Mal texts Jennifer and lures her to the basement bathroom, and then Mal, Reagan, and Tess taunt Jennifer and tear the journal she had given Mal. The following week, Jennifer runs away from home. 

After this, Mal becomes worried about Jennifer’s disappearance and is determined to find her. She sees some blinking lights that she thinks might be an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP), and Mal theorizes that Jennifer’s disappearance is linked to extraterrestrials—in this way, she subconsciously displaces the blame from her own actions to aliens. 

Mal’s friends are uninterested in helping her look for Jennifer, so Mal turns to two other classmates, Ingrid and Kath. Ingrid is a former friend who was also bullied by Pete. Kath is Black and Jewish and experiences microaggressions at school due to her race and religion. They agree to help Mal and dive into a series of adventures that involve breaking into Jennifer’s room to retrieve her journals, sneaking into the school’s media center to use the radio, and convincing Pete to get them access to the town’s radio station to broadcast a larger signal. They hope they can transmit a message into space to contact aliens and find Jennifer. 

They receive a message in response and discover that Jennifer is at Howard Park, where the town’s largest radio tower is. At the park, Mal spots Jennifer and pursues her, though Jennifer wants nothing to do with her and climbs away, up the tower. Mal apologizes to Jennifer and admits she was jealous of Jennifer’s self-confidence and wanted to deprive her of it. A bright light suddenly flashes in the sky, and Jennifer’s hand slips from the guardrail; she appears as if she is suspended in air for a few seconds before she plummets to the ground. 

Later, Jennifer has a broken leg but is otherwise fine. Mal visits her and gives her a new journal. Jennifer thanks Mal for finding her but doesn’t know if she can forgive her for bullying her. Mal understands and hopes they can be friends one day; the girls are also united by the unexplained phenomenon they both witnessed, which no one else noticed. The novel ends with an excerpt from Jennifer’s new journal, in which she theorizes that gravity and dark energy are two forces that counterbalance each other, like good and bad. She believes that in these tensions, people can learn how to change and understand that they are not alone.