Apple
(Skin to the Core)
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
National Book Award Longlist
TIME's 10 Best YA and Children's Books of 2020
NPR's Best Book of 2020
Shelf Awareness's Best Books of 2020
Publishers Weekly's Big Indie Books of Fall
Amazon's Best Book of the Month
AICL Best YA Books of 2020
CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Books of 2020
PRAISE
"Stirring…. Raw and moving." —TIME
"Beautiful imagery and with words that soar and scald." —The Buffalo News
"Easily one of the best books to be published in 2020. The kind of book bound to save lives." —LitHub
"A powerful narrative about identity and belonging." —Paste Magazine
FOUR STARRED REVIEWS
★ "Timely and important." —Booklist, starred review
★ "Searing yet dryly funny." —The Bulletin, starred review
★ "Exceptional." —Shelf-Awareness, starred review
★ "Captivating." —School Library Journal, starred review
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."
In APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE), Eric Gansworth tells his story, 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Eric Gansworth digs into his own story of poverty, racism, and family love in this powerful, heartfelt YA memoir. In a series of poems, Gansworth explores the realities of growing up on a Native American reservation in New York State. Though Gansworth is no stranger to pain and hopelessness, his love of comic books and the Beatles—as well as his aspirations toward higher education—all help push him toward the personal growth he’ll need to attain a happier, brighter future. Stunningly intimate and absolutely real, his narrative draws from the histories of the Gansworth family and the Onondaga people, as well as on his own raw, candid memories. We were particularly struck by his descriptions of feeling like an outsider even on “the rez,” which was dominated by people of the Tuscarora tribe. And despite how unique Gansworth’s journey is, there’s plenty to relate to. Anyone who has felt like an outsider or held big dreams in their heart will be moved by Apple.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally conceived as a series of paintings, this ambitious memoir in verse by Gansworth (Give Me Some Truth), an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, explores intersectional identities alongside matters of generational and personal experience, erasure, and memory: "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 first describes his family's history, beginning with his grandfather's time in Native American boarding schools, where "you are being taught systematically to forget so that you will have nothing left to pass on to your children." Subsequent sections detail variations on feeling like an outsider: Onondaga Gansworth's childhood on a Tuscarora reservation, the way his early interest in art and pop culture (Batman, the Beatles) made him stand out among his peers, and his adulthood as a gay man after leaving the reservation. Phrases and concepts circle and repeat throughout "apple," for example, appears both as a pejorative ("red on the outside, white on the inside") and in reference to the Beatles' Apple Records, after which the work is structured creating a raw, layered story about love and loss of community, culture, and place. Family photos, black-and-white reproductions of the author's paintings, and project "liner notes" round out the telling. Ages 12 up.
