A writer reflects on his mother’s incredible strength, which he depicts in a short story. However, his mother does not approve of the piece as he had hoped, and he soon makes an important discovery.

Just before an American college student is set to leave for the airport after visiting her extended family in Ethiopia, she realizes her suitcases are too heavy. A fight breaks out between her relatives about what items should travel with her at their behest, versus which ones deserve to be left behind.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

A series of vignettes about various sons along a family tree.

Around the holiday season, a mother takes her children and leaves her deadbeat husband to move into the mountains, all the while trying to find a good father figure for her kids.

A man reflects on the loneliness of his childhood home, where his family would fervently clean the house every Saturday for guests on Sunday who would never show.

In an attempt to impress his emotionally distant father, a boy ridicules his mother, who has loved him unconditionally even in his father's absence. Wracked with guilt, he yearns for her forgiveness - only to find that she does not hold it against him.

On the day of her mother's funeral, a young woman reminisces about the summers during her childhood spent with her family and friends at their lakeside cabin. As she considers her parents' nontraditional relationship, she also wonders about her own love life.

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.

One night while visiting his mother, a man contends with the nature of faith and family.