Works
Fissure: A Life Between Cultures
An essay collection exploring bicultural belonging and identity, the role of language in identity, and the effects of colonization in post-colonial Dinétah (Navajo Country).The author looks into her settler heritage as the child of evangelical missionaries in the Navajo Nation, continuing through her later work in Diné bilingual-bicultural education, probing how colonization has been part of systemic racism in the US and the debt she may owe to the Indigenous culture that continues to play a part in her life. To read the serialized book online go to the Table of Contents
To Drink from the Silver Cup: From Faith Through Exile and Beyond
The Obligation
An essay exploring the question of whether my rich experience of growing up in the Navajo Nation brings with it an obligation and a right to address the tear in the fabric of the world that is made up of indigenous and white people. In Dove Tales, August 2019. Includes author reading an excerpt.
Surprised by Paradise
In and Out
A Good Stranger
Naturalization
An essay about how an interracial relationship lived on in my teaching writing to my African American students. An exploration of cross-cultural identity. In Clockhouse Review, Summer 2013. Listed as Notable in The Best American Essays 2014.
The First Avocado
Award winning montage about mortality through the experience of first tastes. Published in Mount Hope, Fall 2013.