An ambitious undertaking in self-expression in which Gansworth shares the forces that have shaped him, from the intimate, individual, and unique to his powerfully consequential identity as Native American, tracing influences back multiple generations.

This book addresses generational experiences, personal experiences, and cultural erasure. The author creates a raw and layered story about love and loss of community, culture, and place. The verse is rounded out with photographs and paintings from the author.

I was only a few pages into Eric Gansworth’s Apple: Skin to the Core when I realized how important it was that I read this book, which bursts open a derogatory label to reveal the author’s Indigenous experience. From Gansworth’s reality—living in poverty on a reservation, an Onondaga among Tuscaroras—to the near erasure of his culture via boarding schools only two generations prior, this memoir in verse holds a magnifying glass to white supremacy in action. Stylishly rendered to mirror the evolution of The Beatles, this coming-of-age story is enlightening, and often heartbreaking, and outsiders and outliers will find themselves within.