After being sexually assaulted by a well-respected professor, a reclusive Chinese American girl who grew up in an abusive family struggles to find her voice while her mother tells her to be silent.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
When Gabriel, a 7-year-old Chinese kid who loves ballet, becomes friends with Rob, another Chinese kid from school, Rob’s dad gets suspicious about Gabriel's feminine behavior and decides to intervene.
Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.