Apple: (Skin to the Core)

Powerful, beautiful, heartbreaking – This YA visual and poetic memoir of Eric Gansworths family and self is a raw and elegant testimony to his life as Onondaga on the Tuscarora Nation. Forever an outsider on the inside for many reasons, Eric builds the pieces of his familys past and culture to preserve and understand them and who he is. Much of it is undone through systematic cultural genocide via boarding schools, mainstream media, and an inability for the Tuscarora and Onondaga to thrive upon this reservation land. Yet. Yet the spirit of community and love is tight knight. There is no escaping the nicknames bestowed upon one in your youth or any misstep taken. People gather and share stories of ones elders until, one day, you discover youre an elder and those nephews and nieces are carrying forward the traditions you didnt remember so well. Beyond loss, family, laughter, his memoir is a book of hope.

Details: Arranged like a music album with liner notes at the end explaining the significance of the art pieces and record labels. The Beatles White Album plays a heavy role here and readers familiar with Gansworths work shouldnt be surprised. However, it is all beautiful and the perfect metaphor for what he accomplishes in this work.

Personal note: I am not indigenous, but parts of this memoir struck my heart. My aunt was Yucci amongst the Creek, although scattered into a bigger city during the Depression. Her son, an enrolled member of her tribe, searches for information about the Yucci for she didnt know much about her tribal customs. She married my handsome uncle out in California where they moved, and the economy seemed easier there. Did she also feel forever the outsider? I never asked her about her family or past, for I was young and these things you didnt do as a kid in my family. You listened for whatever the elders choose to say when talking and learn. But my aunt was always silent on this.

Thank you for not being silent, Eric Gansworth. More stories about contemporary indigenous life need to be shared. This is highly recommended for young adults on up.

This memoir is a work of genius. Gansworth’s writing and artwork are magical.
It’s a story about family, fitting in, poverty, stereotypes, great loss, the search for identity, and what it means to grow up Native American–all experienced by the author, who spent the first 20 or so years of his life on the Tuscarora Nation Reservation in Niagara County, NY.
The arc of his story is fascinating enough, but Gansworth has also woven in numerous allusions to the Beatles, the White Album and Abbey Road. Only in the hands of a master could this marriage of seemly disparate experiences work so well.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. Eric Gansworth is a true artist whose interests cross many mediums. This memoir includes a series of poems that tell the story of Gansworth’s own life and that of his family. As a Native American, Gansworth chronicles the push and pull between the desire to leave the reservation and all of its difficulties with the desire to hold on to cultural traditions before it is too late, especially within a broader American culture that has often worked to erase them. This is a lovely and compelling look at Native American culture from an artist who has lived it. This is a review of the audio version, which is read by the author.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member