Content Warning: This section discusses substance abuse, colonial violence, cultural genocide, child abuse, and anti-Indigenous racism.

The author and narrator of Apple (Skin to the Core), Eric Gansworth was born in 1965 on a Tuscarora reservation near Niagara Falls, New York. He is an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation and often identifies himself as either Onondaga or Haudenosaunee rather than American. He feels out of place because he is an Onondaga among Tuscarora people, even though much of his family is Tuscarora. Gansworth is a writer and visual artist who has published several books before this memoir, including Indian Summers (1998), Extra Indians (2010), and If I Ever Get Out of Here (2013) as well as poetry collections like Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon (2000), A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function (2008). He teaches at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he is also a writer in residence. Originally, he went to college to study electroencephalography, but he was more interested in pursuing his interest in art and literature.

Throughout Apple, Gansworth explores his experience of growing up on the Tuscarora reservation. Through