Stacie Denetsosie-Mitchell's new collection delivers gritty, fantastical, and beautifully intimate short stories that shed light on the young Indigenous experience.
A young Navajo man catches a ride home alongside a casket he’s sure contains his dead grandfather. A gas station clerk witnesses the kidnapping of the newly crowned Miss Northwestern Arizona. A grieving daughter reconnects with her mother, whose voice emerges from her Amazon Alexa. Diné writer, teacher, and influencer Stacie Denetsosie-Mitchell reveals unshielded truths from her experiences on the Navajo reservation and beyond in her new book, The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories. The short-story collection presents tales of grief, family, acceptance, and humor that capture the young Indigenous existence in a contemporary world.
Known on social media as @navajodarling, Denetsosie-Mitchell studied creative writing at Utah State University before heading to the Institute of American Indian Arts to receive her MFA in fiction. She has since gone on to complete a residency at the Ucross Native American Writer Residency, publish multiple pieces, and teach workshops for fellow Indigenous writers. The Missing Morningstar is her debut book.
C&I talked with the author about her experience as a first-generation graduate, tackling her insecurities, and her future novel endeavors.
C&I: What inspired you to begin writing this collection?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: I was trying to come up with stories that could be a novel, but none of them felt novel in length. So I just kept writing these short stories. At the time, I was really interested in adolescence, being a young girl and not really knowing how to deal with that awkward time in your life. And then, layering on top of that, the situations that you might find yourself in growing up on the Navajo reservation. Some of the stories are loosely based on people that I know. I really just wanted to build a world around them and see what would happen.
C&I: Was it important not to shy away from prevalent issues in the young Indigenous experience and your own life? How does it feel being so vulnerable in a public setting?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: Yes. As a writer, you’re trying to get as close to the truth as possible. And, when you’re in the truth, you can’t really edit out things that are real, that are occurring in contemporary time. I really try not to look down on the characters who engage in that sort of behavior, because that’s just the reality that they live in.
It feels really scary. I think one thing that’s nerve-racking is all these stories are from a more tender underbelly of myself, so sharing them with a larger audience is going to be really intimidating. I know there are going to be people who don’t understand the stories and might be scandalized by them. But I think it’s exciting because, coming from a group that was supposed to be silenced, my voice will be out there and I’m really proud of that.
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C&I: Were you inspired by any particular authors while creating this book?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: Oh, yeah, I definitely returned to my mentor Kristiana Kahakauwila’s book, This Is Paradise, as well as Kelli Jo Ford’s Crooked Hallelujah, and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. A lot of female Native writers. I really clung to their wisdom. They were things I grew up reading.
Louise Erdrich is a brilliant writer. She’s just broken down so many barriers. I was reading one of her early interviews and she said, “My stories are kind of like Shakespeare, but all of my characters are Indians,” and I loved it.
C&I: Did you learn anything about yourself during the writing process?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: After I came away from these stories, I felt a bigger appreciation for my family history and my existence. I did use some of my own personal experiences. For instance, when my grandfather passed away, they put him in the back of a Suburban, and I thought it was so strange because the roads are bad out on the Navajo reservation. So I think that it just allowed me to see the beauty in these moments that I felt were impossible to see any glimmer of light within. They’re very much grief narratives, but I also like to think that they’re funny. There are so many stages of grief, and it can have moments of levity and moments that are not just pure depression.
C&I: There are a lot of moments of levity in the book. For instance, there is a short story in which a daughter connects with her mother through an Amazon Alexa. Where did that come from?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: My mom wanted an Amazon Alexa so that she could listen to country music on it. So I set it up for her, and one day I came over and her app had disconnected from the Alexa, and she was like “Alexa’s been saying crazy things to me.” She said, “I was talking in Navajo to your aunt on the phone, and Alexa just piped up and said, ‘You can teach me key phrases from your language.’” And my mom was horrified. I thought that was really funny, so then this story came out of that.
C&I: What made you decide to become a creative writer?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: My family has always pushed me to do my artistic pursuits. Before I wanted to do creative writing, I did a lot of painting. I did a lot of drawing. I thought I wanted to be an illustrator or a comic book artist. Somewhere in high school, I realized you don’t have to draw pictures; you can just write the words. And that was really freeing. I’ve always been drawn to telling stories. I feel like there’s a lot that you can learn from reading and writing them. I was raised by great storytellers, so I just wanted to be a part of the conversation.
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C&I: You studied at Utah State University before attending the Institute of American Indian Arts. Can you talk about the experience of going from a more conventional “Western canon” education to being immersed in American Indian?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: I feel like it’s kind of noticeable in the collection. I wrote Dormant, Reservation State of Mind, The Missing Morningstar, and Under the Porchway during my program at Utah State. And they’re a little bit more controlled in narrative. While I was there, I had a lot of insecurity that I think was rooted in Western education not being inclusive for Native peoples. Everything about the Western education system was not built for Native people. It was built to assimilate them. So it was hard to have non-Native mentors read my work and want to delve into some of the topics that were considered taboo in my culture.
I enjoyed the Western canon, but I didn’t see myself in it. I did my undergrad at Utah State University and then I did my grad studies there, and that’s when I chose a focus of Native literature. I had one Native mentor, and seeing myself and our narratives represented was really empowering.
C&I: What were some of the biggest challenges? How did you overcome them?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: One of mine was grammar. That was a really big insecurity that I had. I’m a first-generation graduate, so there was a lot of imposter syndrome in there.
But I wrote down a lot of words of encouragement from my mentors. If they had an offhand comment about my work, I kept a running list on my phone. I think I called it the “They Believe in Me” list or something like that. When I was having a hard time, I could just read through them. Those little affirmations from professors can be really exciting, particularly when you’re coming from a place of insecurity. Also, not being afraid to ask for help was something I had to learn. I spent a lot of time in office hours with my professors and being like, ‘I might be starting from a different level than everybody else, is but I’m here to learn.’
C&I: What’s the next step in your writing journey?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: I’m currently working on a novel. It’s more complicated than my short-story collection and I think it’s going to require a lot more research. It’s going to be based in the late ’80s in Brigham City, Utah, surrounding the Intermountain Indian School. It’s called Silver Teeth, and it’s a really weird idea that came to me in a dream. I’d like to see that out in the world and people engaging with it.
C&I: What advice would you give to Indigenous authors who are trying to break into the business while still maintaining their Indigenous culture?
Denetsosie-Mitchell: I taught a session for the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute, and I had my students do an exercise based off Louise Erdrich’s “Advice to Myself.” It’s this poem where she talks about how, as writers, we need to find out what is authentic and go after it with our whole hearts. She challenges us to move past the distractions. I think my advice for emerging Native writers is to move past the distractions, move past the idea that you need to know the Western canon perfectly, that you need to be perfect and add grammar and use conventional storytelling forms. Find inspiration in your culture. I’ve seen beautiful poems modeled after Navajo rugs and basket-making. There are so many different structures that we can use. Just discover them, and don’t be ashamed. Just enter. Just be brave.
The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories is now available to order online or at your local bookstore.
To learn more about Stacie Denetsosie-Mitchell and her creative endeavors, check out her website and social media.