Apple: (Skin to the Core)

APPLE is a life told in poems. The Gansworth family are Onondagas, but they live on a Tuscarora reservation in New York State. He's the youngest of seven children and grows up in a house without running water, where 10 or 11 people sometimes share three bedrooms. His mother walks miles to her job cleaning houses and his father is almost always absent, but he's surrounded by a caring extended family. He loves comic book superheroes and Batman but wishes the Fantastic Four would see Native Americans as superheroes not "the super hapless." At 11, he's working tying grapes at a local farm to earn money for school, and at 13, he has a summer job at a garage. He's often hungry and sometimes uses an electric blanket for warmth in the unheated house. In his mostly White high school, he regularly hears things like "You've got a good work ethic" or "You've got a good grasp of grammar" ... "You know, for an Indian." A high school counselor tells him that college is not for him, that working in a garage is what his future holds, but he finds his way to a local community college. The last section of the book follows Gansworth through his 20s, 30s, and 40s, into his 50s and life as a college professor, writer, and artist. It's also a time when his poems tell of a new generation of Gansworths who are exploring and embracing their Native American heritage. Scattered throughout the book are family photos (unfortunately without identifying captions) and black-and-white reproductions of Gansworth's paintings.