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.

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.

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 middle aged upper class woman and her family live in an upscale neighborhood. The family's laughter turns malicious when they cannot distinguish between what is comical and what is horrendous and increasingly find amusement at the expense of others.

A wealthy man in Chicago suddenly learns about the untimely death of a poor woman he'd been dating. Confronted with her child, whom he'd begun to develop a bond with, he must determine to what extent he will allow his greed to overcome his compassion.

Two Chinese-American brothers buy and repair a broken-down home for their parents to move into, but they deeply disagree on how to execute their plan.

The daughter of a rich family must stop her parents from discriminating against their poor neighbors.

An Italian man recounts how his father came into money upon arriving in the United States but spent and then lost it all when his factory caught fire. Despite his Papa’s veritable financial ignorance and dangerous pride, the son asserts none of it was ever his father's fault.

A wealthy family moves into a mansion on an island and raises several generations there. As the years pass, different family members show how things have both changed and also stayed the same within the house.

An unhappy woman lives in the slums of New York only to watch her life transform as her children become wildly successful, catapulting her into an unrecognizable world of extravagance.