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 teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

An amateur innkeeper struggles to demonstrate her knowledge of urban sophistication to her important guests and fails to grasp the benefits of authenticity to one’s heritage, leading to her mother being better-received by the guests.

When a man visits an old village called Ain Tadouirt to visit an old friend and conduct research, he becomes captured by a tribe and forced to entertain. He must figure out how to escape a life of enslavement in a foreign land.

An American writer travels to Sophia where he meets a famous poetess. He falls in love with her and her attitude.

When a northern writer arrives in a rural Tennessee town to better understand the culture for his novel, he is put through a harrowing night by the menfolk who, in the course of an elaborate joke, convince him he has inadvertently killed the son of his hosts.

An American expat who lives in Rome struggles to understand his adopted country, especially the Italian language. When he finally finds the right teacher, he is overjoyed, but her unique personal life quickly pervades their lessons and confounds their rapport.

A Black, southern house servant with internalized racism, joins her mistress on a visit to another region, where she observes Black people acting with something she abhors: autonomy.

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

Lynnie is a young, working-class girl who works at the Stone House in town and wastes her days making stories about the lives of the people around her, which she tells to her friend, Isobel. But when rumors start to circulate, Isobel mysteriously moves away, and Lynnie is left wondering why.