A young Black girl confronts her overbearing mother's poverty and her lack of a father when she is coerced into attending a program intended to make her a "professional" member of society who can break the cycle of poverty.

After their father leaves, two young brothers struggle to remain allies when one of them is bullied and accused of being gay.

When a black teenage girl at a private school gets invited to a party by a wealthy white student, she struggles to navigate the divide between their world and her own.

A young girl engages in a private affair with a much older man to prove that she is a woman, and in doing so, feels joy at the secret she is hiding from her watchful mother.

A Black teenage mother wants to visit her daughter's father, but she struggles to get her family to help watch the baby at home.

A sister and her half-brother are suspicious when the boy's father, who was a heroin addict, returns home for a visit. The father's relapse throws their relationship into chaos, but then he bestows a unique gift on the children before he leaves.

A young Black girl in a severely underfunded public school is punished for bullying another girl. As she reflects on the events that pushed her toward aggression and her reason for choosing her specific victim, she realizes she doesn't wish to apologize after all.

A young girl performs the twice-daily ritual of giving her grandmother her insulin shot as her uncle schemes to steal the syringes for his own drug use. At the same time, her mother wounds her by placing all of her faith in her brilliant cousin to lift himself out of poverty and into happiness, as if the family is not happy already.

After two of his friends are murdered in New York City, a mother sends her teenage son to live with his prickly grandfather in Florida for the summer.

A young Black boy spends time with an rebellious friend, but his strict mother thinks their friendship will lead to his premature death.