Apple: Skin to the Core

 

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth is a touching and haunting memoir.  Told in verse, it is full of stories and photography that opens with Gansworth's grapndparents' school photos from Carlisle, the Indian Internment School.    It ends with a photo of Gansworth in his Batman cape as a child on the Rez.  So it truly comes full circle.  

What makes this memoir stand out is Gansworth's artwork throughout the book. It enhances the stories and memories he chooses to share.  

He writes of the rules, opportunities, lost language, and learning how to be himself when he ultimately chooses to leave the Rez to enter the White World.  This is a book for young adult and adult readers to understand one person's family history and the affects that the U.S. Government had on them.