In mid-century, small-town Maverley, a veteran police officer meets a sheltered teenage girl who become rebellious. They remain acquaintances throughout the years, and he follows gossip about her troubled family life.

When his son becomes interested in music and dance based on ancient African rituals, a man laughs it off, teasing his son and his new friends. However, a strange experience with a space-traveling musician leaves him wondering whether his son may be right after all or if the whole thing was just a dream.

In a segregated America at the onset of World War II, strange, explosive “stumps”—formed out of spores and resembling wooden statues of the recently deceased—have begun to appear all over cities. To neutralize and remove these stumps, a new government agency has employed a group of singers whose unique vocal resonance can turn the stumps to dust. But when the only two Black female “exterminators” in Chicago—a God-fearing goody two-shoes and a brash blues singer—uncover the agency's corrupt secrets, they decide to stage a rebellion.

A jazz producer visits a great saxophone player when he hears that the musician's health is deteriorating. The producer sets up a recording session for the musician before the musician loses his ability to play forever.

A jazz band drives through the night to make a rehearsal in the Jim Crow South. When they stop at a gas station for dinner, the band members' nonstop antics cause them to make enemies.

In the far future, a woman is selected to undergo a Great Becoming. As she is forced to choose what she will become, she realizes that someone people do not have to choose at all.

After his cellmate and sexual partner leaves for parole, an inmate forms a new relationship and moves into a room with three other men, but he struggles to adapt to this new life, which involves a whole new set of expectations.

In the modern day, a mixed-race man perched on the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, ready to jump. He contemplates his lovers, mother, writing, and regrets to the tune of an old jazz song.