APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE)

Poetic, intense, and defiant, Native American author and artist Eric Gansworth delivers his own coming-of-age story. The youngest child of seven, he grew up on a reservation outside Buffalo, New York, amid abject poverty and systemic racism. Like many children of the 1960s and '70s, he adopted pop culture icons like the Beatles, Batman, and Star Wars as his own and watched his brothers go off to Vietnam. Other siblings simply left and never returned. Later, catching up with the history and challenges of his own Onondaga culture was more problematic. Hearing Gansworth read passages in his grandparents' native Tuscarora language is heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. This is the sound of an important, often overlooked, piece of America. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2020]