Apple: Skin to the Core

This section summarizes “Jaboozie Turns Me On to Deep Cuts,” “Mr. Dressup,” “Metamorphoses,” “Lucky,” and “The Boy Who Fell to the Rez.”

In “Jaboozie Turns Me On to Deep Cuts,” Gansworth depicts how Jaboozie introduced him to The Beatles’ The White Album after a Fourth of July celebration. The album was different from all the other Beatles albums Gansworth had ever heard, and he loved it.

During school holidays, Gansworth watched a lot of daytime TV, like “Mr. Dressup,” a low-budget Canadian show. Whenever costume opportunities came up, like Christmas pageants or Halloween parades, Gansworth was enthusiastic. His mother helped him make costumes, though the school sometimes criticized her work and forced Gansworth to perform without a costume.

In “Metamorphoses,” Gansworth contemplates Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s famous novella. Like Samsa, Gansworth sometimes felt out of place or inconvenient. He visited his brother-in-law’s reservation in Canada. They camped by a lake, and Gansworth took care of his nieces and nephews. His brother-in-law’s mother struggled to keep track of her grandchildren, thinking Gansworth was one of them.

During Easter break when Gansworth was 11, he started working on a grape farm. His mother told him that he was “Lucky” that the farmer was willing to hire him, even though the labor was very hard and the pay was very low. He was also lucky to be paid by the hour instead of by his output. He made $120 in two weeks. While he worked, he listened to the Beatles on the radio and felt lucky to know that The Beatles all came from working-class backgrounds yet still succeeded. This gave Gansworth hope that he wouldn’t be tying grapes his whole life.

In “The Boy Who Fell to the Rez,” Gansworth describes how he accidentally got a haircut that resembled David Bowie. He became interested in Bowie’s music and was intrigued by Bowie’s claim that “our public faces are just another mask, another disguise / we maintain so others don’t really see us” (123). He too felt like he was hiding his true self behind a mask. When he learned the plot of The Man Who Fell to Earth, it resonated with him, and he felt like it was the story he’d “been waiting [his] whole life for someone to tell [him]” (125).

This section summarizes “From Iron Man to Skywalker: 3. Public Assistance,” “Wyatt Wingfoot Ends Up Singing That Same Old Song,” “Stupid Things I Buy the Summer I Am 13,” “I Leave Formal Training Before This Opportunity Begins,” and “Hampton’s Shadow Crosses Over Us Again.”

In “From Iron Man to Skywalker: 3. Public Assistance,” Gansworth recalls being 11 and how he had to wear glasses. They were ugly, but they his mother’s Public Assistance insurance paid for them. He and his mother went to a bar to find his father. Gansworth went inside to ask him for $20 so that they could get through the week. His father gave him the money and told him not to spend it on books, since they were clearly already ruining his eyes.

“Wyatt Wingfoot Ends Up Singing That Same Old Song” narrates Gansworth’s disappointment with the very stereotypical depiction of Wyatt and other Indigenous people in the Fantastic Four comics. The Indigenous characters weren’t superheroes but hapless victims who needed to be rescued.

In “Stupid Things I Buy the Summer I Am 13,” Gansworth recalls his summer job. He made $224 every two weeks, which seemed like a lot. Half went toward bills, and he spent the other half. He bought secondhand clothes, Star Wars trading cards, and (one day) a huge amount of food from McDonald’s, wanting to know what it was like “to leave a restaurant, completely full and satisfied” (132). The next day, he was hungry again.

In “I Leave Formal Training Before This Opportunity Begins,” Gansworth depicts how his life changed dramatically when he started middle school off the reservation. He no longer learned Tuscarora. While he never learned much of the language, his nieces and nephews were becoming much more fluent. Gansworth wished his grandfather could see the change in younger generations.

Before colonization, many Indigenous communities were more matriarchal. In “Hampton’s Shadow Crosses over Us Again,” Gansworth traces the rise of patriarchal ideas among residential school students. When his mother was a teen, she spent summers as a live-in housekeeper for white families, and her father took all her pay. Gansworth felt that he should be grateful that she let him keep half of what he earned. His grandfather forced his children to reenact the same colonial programs he had to take part in during his schooling: Students were forced to work for white families during the summers.

This section summarizes “From Iron Man to Skywalker: 4. Devourer of Worlds,” “Disguise,” “Masks Unmasked,” and “In Spencer’s, I Become Someone Else for Under Ten Dollars.”

In “From Iron Man to Skywalker: 4. Devourer of Worlds,” Gansworth depicts being 13, when his peers teased him for still reading comic books. His aunt and uncle, who had moved to Las Vegas, came to visit, and so did his father. Gansworth showed his father one of his comics, in which Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl learned that they were going to have a baby. Their excitement about the baby is the opposite reaction Gansworth is used to on the reservation, where babies are often an unexpected inconvenience. His father tells him to put the comic away before anybody sees him with it.

Often, Gansworth felt like he had to “Disguise” himself. He found it ironic that his nickname was Batman, whose alter-ego was a millionaire, when Gansworth grew up in poverty.

In “Masks Unmasked,” Gansworth explores how ethnographers have misunderstood Haudenosaunee communities. Some museums display False Faces (ceremonial masks) without understanding that the masks housed living spirits and should be treated with respect. Many Indigenous people have protested the display of False Faces, even ripping photographs of the masks out of books. Although Gansworth loves drawing, he’d never draw a False Face because doing so would bring it to life.

“In Spencer’s, I Become Someone Else for Under Ten Dollars” depicts Gansworth as he got a fake ID. A girl from his community helped him create the ID with her typewriter. She gave both of them fake last names and addresses that matched so that they seemed like siblings.

In “From Iron Man to Skywalker: 5. Amputation Scars,” Gansworth recalls a time when he was 15 and was at his uncle’s house. He often helped his uncle, who had an amputated leg, with chores. Gansworth’s father arrived and asked to see his artwork. Gansworth obliged, despite his mother’s warnings; his father told him to “quit drawing ‘jack-off pictures,’ and maybe capture / Indians instead” (155).