When she returned after high-school, Sekaquaptewa rejected her family's traditionalist Hopi values and married her husband, Emory, in order to live biculturally.
Settling down in Hotevilla, Emory became a tribal judge while Helen involved herself in social welfare work and community building.
In 1951, after being taught by Elders she had come into contact with as a result of her son Abbott's hospitalization the year prior, she converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
[4] Me and Mine describes Sekaquaptewa's life-long struggle with her identity, having to navigate the Hopi traditionalism of the "Hostiles" and the cultural assimilation of American colonialism.
Carroll writes: "Me and Mine literalizes Helen as a person whose self fails to conform to colonial American standards of individualism; whose life refuses to be confined to the timeline between her birth and death; and whose written story harbors oral traditions in the printed product.