Poems recounting family and personal history, twined with artwork and musical references, accompanied by occasional photographs, Eric Gansworth's memoir is a love letter to his family and Native community-he's an enrolled Onondaga born and raised at the Tuscarora Nation. His poems tell stories buoyed by keen, poignant details bringing people and places and events into sharp focus. His mother is a compelling, enduring presence, but even individuals who make fleeting appearances come alive on the page. Poverty is an indelible character, too, while the setting, especially Dog Street (Mount Hope Road), the main road that ran through the reservation and his youth, and the house that was his home, are vividly realized. A visual artist too, Gansworth's pieces include a rendering of Dog Street echoing the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road but with self-portraits in place of the musicians. It's one of many ways the importance of music in his life, especially the Beatles, is incorporated throughout the structurally complex narrative following him from childhood into college. "Liner Notes" at book's end provide additional information on the musical connections, narrative structure, and some of the imagery, including the "apple" of the title, a derogatory term among Native people meaning "red on the outside, white on the inside," and also the Beatles' record label icon. Gansworth speaks truths about survival, include adaptation in a world in which Indigenous people and cultures have faced attempts at erasure and ongoing racism yet endure. (Age 14 and older)

Winner of the American Indian Youth Literature Award
Printz Honor Winner
National Book Award Longlist
TIME 10 Best YA and Children's Books of the Year
NPR Best of the Year
Shelf Awareness Best of the Year
Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of Fall
Amazon Best Book of the Month
AICL Best YA Books of the Year
CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Books of the Year

"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

★ "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.