Activity: Short Story Read Along: “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

This is a self-directed program that is not occurring on a specific date or time. 

Read the short story “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain about a young Blackfeet man who turns eighteen and comes into money due to him from a claim check. Leave a comment on the Magazines and Newspapers Center Blog in response to the suggested discussion questions below. Visit the Magazines and Newspapers Center on the 5th floor of the Main Library to pick up print-outs of the story and an interview with the author.

In the beginning of HolyWhiteMountain’s story from the March 20, 2023 issue of the New Yorker, the narrator explains: “As far back as I could remember, I had heard discussion of claim checks. There was something elemental about it: the talk circled round in a seasonal way. People joked about being claim-check rich and then later laughed about being claim-check broke. They bought claim-check cars, got claim-check drunk, and some got claim-check married. That’s how it was for us for a long time, until the money ran out. The Feds are never more careful with limits and end dates on their moral awakenings than they are with us, such is the concern that we might steal the whole country right out from under them. Then we were back to where we were before, a bunch of broke skins way out on the Northern Plains, teasing one another. So this is a story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at that time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, who I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her when she was alive.” 

Read the story in Flipster, a platform that offers access to hundreds of digital magazines, and click "Post a comment" on the Magazines and Newspapers Center Blog to share your thoughts on these discussion questions. 

• Have you ever come into a windfall of a large sum of money like the narrator in the story? What did you spend it on?  
• In “False Star,” the narrator ultimately buys a black Bronco which transforms him into "look[ing] rich or at least like a real fancy guy” (53). Later he describes having a car as the equivalent of an Indian having a good warhorse (53). What was your first car and how did getting it transform the way you saw yourself?  
• In many ways, this is a story about the Blackfeet and their land—the claim check that is the catalyst for the story stems from the tribe selling the Sweet Grass Hills to the U.S. Federal Government during a period of duress. How does the environment play a role in this story? Feel free to quote sections of text that describe the land. What effect do these descriptions have on the overall narrative?

Resources  

• “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, The New Yorker, March 20, 2023 (text)
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain Reads “False Star” on the New Yorker's Writer's Voice podcast (audio) 
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, New Yorker Interview with Willing Davidson, March 13, 2023 (text)