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.

A daughter wakes up her mother to ask how much money she made from the dog races — but instead the mother distractedly dwells on her troubling encounters with men.

A woman's complicated relationship to her mother is captured in three vignettes: one from directly after her death, one from when she is still alive, and one from years after she is gone.

An overprotective mother attempts to get her teenage daughter to tell her why she is so upset. In an erratic and panicked conversation, the daughter reveals an unimaginable problem they must tackle together.

After a dying mother instructs her children to find their distant aunt and new guardian, they must step outside the home they have always known and embark on a journey toward their new life.

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 young, African-Carib girl is raised by the woman who does her father's laundry after her mother dies in childbirth. Feeling a lack of love in her life, the girl seeks to understand her relationship with her distant father and dead mother.

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

A young girl's mother goes to the hospital for an operation without explaining to her family what she is sick with or when she will return home.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.