Denise Giardina

Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, Denise Giardina experienced the uncertainties of life in a coal camp firsthand. Her grandfather and two uncles were coal miners, her father was a bookkeeper for the coal company, and her mother was a nurse. When Giardina was twelve, her father was laid off and the family moved to Charleston, West Virginia. After graduating from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973, Giardina earned a master’s of divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1979 and taught at West Virginia State University. She is an activist for environmental and social justice, an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church, and a former third-party candidate for governor of West Virginia....

“Culture Springs from the Actions of People in a Landscape”: Poor Whites and Environmentalism

This chapter examines the varying strains of environmentalism and/or activism that run throughout the work of southern writers including Janisse Ray, Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Mary Hood, Ann Pancake, Silas House, and Denise Giardina. It explores the relationship between environmentalism and poverty as it discusses waste, throw-away culture, recycling and sustainability. It argues for a move from regionalism/nationalism to localism/globalism and questions the false dichotomy between the Global North and Global South. The chapter turns to Appalachia to consider the impact of Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), and it interrogates both the economics that often drive the poor to undertake environmentally destructive jobs and the activism that exists within poor communities.