Workers at an American franchise restaurant located in southern China learn of the different ways American capitalism exploits them and creates food waste, leading them to rebel against their bosses.

A Native American man in Arizona is abandoned by his family on account of his alcoholism, leaving him to work with a local White ranch owner on the condition that he remain sober. Over the course of a year working there, he remains sober, and his wife considers moving back with their son, but his old friends and old habits return to tempt him towards addiction.

When a young hospital attendee runs away from charges of murder, he lands in the refuge of two artists. He stays to learn how to paint and begins to form secretive bonds with his strange hosts.

After his retirement, an older man struggles to come to terms with his own mortality and begins to imagine death all around him, particularly when he hears coyotes howl near his house in the night.

On a visit to his old family farm in the Great Plains, a man recalls his tumultuous relationship with his now-deceased brother. In the process, he must reckon with the continued influence of familial trauma and confront his own ambiguous role in his brother's death.

A Russian, fifty-two-year-old cancer survivor living in New York struggles to come to terms with the fact that his dog—which had been left behind by his ex-girlfriend—might be dying.

Compiling notes for an English essay, a sixteen-year-old girl recounts her middle-class upbringing, kleptomania, and eventual coercion into prostitution and assisting with drug use. After she suffers violence and abuse, she is eventually rescued — but the experience traumatizes her.

As she walks alongside the Hudson River with her friend, a woman excitedly explains her intricate vision of what would give her happiness.

Protagonist Walter Brickman strains against the protective bounds set by his daughter Barbara, who has cared for him and monitored his obsessive tendencies since his suicide attempt following the death of his wife. He works on his garden relentlessly, going through the motions of family life whilst confiding in a secret friend, finally triumphing as he escapes his daughter’s admonition and makes it to the fair to see his tomatoes have won first prize.

An old Irish-American widow receives a marriage proposal that she initially declines, but after she speaks to her son, she feels overwhelming pressure to say yes.