A young man secretly fathers a child that he grooms from afar to be the perfect child he can use as a control in his experiment comparing the white experience and the Black experience.

When he discovers gold near his village, an African man dissatisfied with his lot in life develops new obsessions, flouts old responsibilities, and ultimately loses more than he gains.

As he flushes three decades of narcotics out of his system, an Arkansas man recalls a traumatic hunting trip into the woods with his father and his friends. In this memory, he finds the roots of both his addiction and his identity.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, an aged Black man returns to the Virginia plantation where he was born a slave 99 years ago. His arrival forces the now-destitute family who once owned him to confront their poverty and their racism alike.

An embittered teacher takes an inner-city Black boy under her wing and discovers his immense academic and personal gifts. But even as he begins to escape the drugs that have defined his upbringing, dealing threatens to tear his loved ones away forever.