Apple: (Skin to the Core)

by Eric Gansworth Narrated by Eric Gansworth

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A uniquely written novel-in-verse, set to the pacing of Beatles songs, Apple: (Skin to the Core) is a powerful memoir about the author's experience growing up in the Native community. Honest and profoundly raw, this is a compelling read for adults of all ages.

How about a book that makes you barge into your boss's office to read a page of poetry from? That you dream of? That every movie, song, book, moment that follows continues to evoke in some way?The term Apple is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly red on the outside, white on the inside.Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds.Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

“With language rich in metaphor, this is a timely and important work that begs for multiple readings.” - BOOKLIST (starred review)

“Easily one of the best books to be published in 2020. The kind of book bound to save lives.” - LIT HUB

“A searing yet dryly funny, at times intimate and at times highly literary picture of life hemmed in by majoritarian expectations and gutted by exploitation that made staying in the family home intolerable but leaving it unthinkable.” - BCCB

“Exceptional….A stirring depiction of Indigenous life likely to evoke empathy from and resonate with all who venture into Gansworth's world.” - SHELF-AWARENESS (starred review)

“A powerful narrative about identity and belonging.” - PASTE MAGAZINE

“A raw, layered story about love and loss of community, culture, and place.”- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Kirkus Reviews

2020-08-04
Native American identity issues are explored in this ambitiously structured memoir in verse.

Gansworth (Onondaga) grew up among Tuscaroras. A minority on his reservation, his identity was further complicated by tribal intermarriage and the fact that three of his grandparents suffered forced assimilation in Indian boarding schools. Fascinated with Batman and masks, his boyhood was spent looking for a costume that would reveal his true self. His mother warned “it’s a white man’s world” while also acknowledging that Gansworth himself seemed destined for more. The memoir is high concept, structured like a palimpsest over the Beatles’ oeuvre. The title alludes to the Beatles’ Apple Records as well as the Native slur that implies someone is “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Written in a nostalgic tone, the book emphasizes cultural dislocation: “So much of my culture feels on the verge of vanishing. I wonder what part of that I’m contributing to with my own lack of knowledge.” Gansworth’s take on his great-uncles’ “erasing themselves too fully to ever come home” complicates his efforts to reclaim the pejorative. From his childhood to his life as a college student and writer, the book skims over a lifetime; feelings of intimacy and emotional intensity are variable even as the elliptical voice is unique. Black-and-white reproductions of Gansworth’s paintings and family photographs enhance and extend the text in a work originally conceived of as a visual arts project.

A rare and special read. (liner notes, section notes, note about the art) (Verse memoir. 12-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173143051
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos