Apple: (Skin To The Core)
by Eric Gansworth
Buy on Amazon"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." -- Inside front jacket flap.
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"When I recommend a certain touching, funny, vulnerable, scathing, endearing YA poetry memoir to my Native cousins, they do a doubletake at the title, Apple. After all, it’s considered a slur in Indian Country (“red on the outside, white on the inside”). Then I add the words that follow, Skin to the Core, which prompts a smile at the author’s cleverness. In Apple (Skin to the Core), Onondaga Eric Gansworth is wry and engaging as he reflects upon a lifetime of topics, including the impact of U.S. federal Indian boarding schools, the complexities of modern Native identity and pop culture, especially music and visual arts."
NPR Books We Love — 2020 · apps.npr.org