In San Francisco, a Chinese grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to pickle the memories she no longer wants to carry with her, much to her daughter’s chagrin.

A Vietnamese near-centenarian living in New Orleans reminisces on wars he experienced, ideas he held, and countries he saw during the 20th century with the help of the ghost of an old friend: Ho Chi Minh.

A teenage girl spends her summer riding horses to waste time while she waits for a letter from her recently enlisted boyfriend to come.

In an apocalyptic future where Earth has been ravaged, a lonely man studies the stars until, one day, they come to him.

When a gay writer is hit over the head and knocked out by his Slovenian friend, he finds himself aimless in New York City, unable to do anything more than read about Eastern European history, retell the same story over again, and wait for his friend to return.

Fresh out of a stint in the army, a young journalism student confronts suicide, isolation, and dilettantism as he drives his alcoholic mother from New York to Connecticut.

A sixteen-year-old girl spends a summer reading on a swing, dodging the expectations and pressures from her mother, father, and best friend.