56 pages 1 hour read

Eric Gansworth

Apple: Skin to the Core

Nonfiction | Memoir in Verse | YA | Published in 2020

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Important Quotes

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“Some Indians feel that to spend too much time

among white people is to risk losing everything

we call our own, even though that idea is itself

loosely defined.”


(Part 1, Poem 2, Page 22)

Throughout much of Apple, Eric Gansworth interrogates how Indigenous identity can feel precarious in the face of white colonialism and cultural genocide. Many people feel a strong need to protect Indigenous culture and hold onto what is left after colonization.

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“As he built up his resistance to new diseases, he also

developed resistance to walking away from the world

where his roots lay, growing deeper and tougher with each

trip back to the homestead.”


(Part 1, Poem 4, Pages 32-33)

Gansworth’s grandfather escaped the full effects of the residential schools because he spent so much time at home, recovering from illness. As a result, the school was never able to fully cut him off from his culture, as they did so many Indigenous children.

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“After you had been wiped clean of the only name

you’d ever known, next came your clothes and your

hair, your language, then your religion, your way of

understanding the world, your culture, your self.”


(Part 1, Poem 4, Page 34)

Residential schools aimed to completely erase everything Indigenous about the children who attended them, from their names to their language, religion, and clothing. This is one of the major forms of cultural genocide in North America.