Partnered with Radine, a poor white Texas girl attempting to rise in society, Jeanne enters Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where Radine outdistances her by being invited to join a sorority, while Jeanne is rejected as high school majorette. The two girls, similar in values, are attracted to similar boys, but it is Radine who is asked to dances. Jeanne, even before she might be invited by a likeable Caucasian, makes sure that classmates know that she is unavailable — lest she have to reject a date that would involve a meeting at the project between the white boy and her virulent, judgmental Japanese father.
In their senior year, as competition with Radine extinguishes Jeanne's hopes of popularity, Ko, forced into sobriety by a bout of vomiting blood, moves the family to the Santa Clara Valley, outside San Jose, to raise strawberries. Jeanne's longing for attention comes to fruition with the election of the annual carnival queen. Barefoot and dressed in an exotic sarong, she defeats blond, blue-eyed, monied Lois Carson for the title, but only through the intervention of Leonard Rodriguez, who uncovers the teachers and secretaries' plot to stuff the ballot box to avoid having a Japanese queen. The victory infuriates Ko, who criticizes bold American females and insists that Jeanne display traditional Japanese propriety. He arrives at a compromise: Jeanne can be carnival queen if she signs up for odori lessons. After ten lessons, the odori teacher rejects her because she smiles too much.
