A review by jwinchell
Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth

4.0

5 stars for concept, 3 stars for execution of sometimes rambling poems that left me confused. This is a memoir in verse, mostly free verse, and it covers Gansworth’s 3 of 4 grandparents who went to Indian boarding schools and had their culture stripped from them, through his growing up years, into his adulthood as he moved off the Rez and became an elder. This is important: he is Onondaga and was raised in the Tuscarora nation, in upper NY state. There are many painstaking parallels to the Beatles, which Gansforth sets forth in the liner notes and that were mostly lost on me. He says this is written for young readers but I don’t see it. It feels like an adult memoir through and through, though he does spend a decent amount of time on the time he was 11.