In New York, a young woman befriends her quirky roommate, who is trying to make it as an actor. While she watches her roommate attempt to accomplish her dreams, the woman reflects on her own life’s direction and what possibilities (or lack of) lie ahead.

A poor, ever-hopeful couple that imagines itself on the brink of a windfall suffers setback after setback, until the husband has a revelation about what in life holds real value.

A boy’s idolized uncle immigrates to the United States. As the child grows into a man in late twentieth-century Nigeria, his relative’s absence takes a toll on the family. When the two men finally meet up years later, the encounter reveals unfulfilled dreams.

After being laid off from his job, a man struggles to find meaning in a utopian world where all of his basic needs are already met for him.

When a young man graduates college and inherits money from his grandfather, he decides to move to France for a year, hoping to feel more at home than he ever did in Chicago.

A college counselor watches anxiously as her teenage son applies to college without her help. As her son plans for his future, the counselor and her husband reflect on how quickly their lives have changed, seeking ways to steady themselves in the midst of middle age.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

When a perpetually unlucky Nigerian American law school dropout meets her parents’ dream son-in-law, she has to pick between finally meeting her parents’ expectations for her and retaining control over her own life, as tempestuous and miserable as it is.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.

When a young man leaves his home in Kansas City to find a career, he struggles to settle down in one spot. He wanders, impoverished, across the western United States and finds a transcendent understanding of the human condition.