A pregnant narrator navigates her Chinese in-law’s opinions about America when they come to visit before she gives birth.

An old linguistics researcher is ousted from his university position on the frontier of a small island he acculturated. Upon his return home, he begins to believe that he and his life's work are marginal.

A young Native American man visits a burial site on a nearby island and must reflect on both his allegiance to his culture and to himself.

A young Native American man talks about his encounter with a white man who was captured by his tribe. The white man and the Native American man grow closer through mutual teaching.

Two young individuals on their honeymoon stop at a gas station in an Indian reservation to buy souvenirs and eat lunch. To the great embarrassment of his wife, the husband spends the entirety of their stop mocking the Native Americans who live there.

A daughter and a mother wonder what the lesson of their story is.

A woman in British Columbia reflects on her Japanese friend from childhood who was swept away from her during World War II-era Japanese internment.

A white American man and a Chinese-American woman visit the woman's family in China. After the woman's cousin compares the woman's Chinese to a toddler's, she stops speaking English and decides she wants to stay in China for awhile before returning, to reconnect with her family and her place of birth. Upon returning to the United States alone, the man, initially disinterested and unmotivated, begins to learn Chinese.

A second-generation Russian immigrant living in contemporary Michigan finds himself caught up in a sad but emotive group of friends when he takes a continuing education course on Intermediate German.

Set in Canada in the 1980s, an Indian-Canadian immigrant woman travels abroad, attempting to learn how to grieve her husband and sons after a terrorist attack on the plane kills them on their way to India.