Reader

David Joy’s essay “Digging in the Trash” was published in the online magazine The Bitter Southerner, in July 2017. 

Since the magazine focuses on Southern culture and literature, we can expect the main readers to be from the Southern United States. However, the online profile of the magazine implies that the essay’s readers could include all Americans, as well as other English-speaking people worldwide.

The content of the essay includes no examples of direct address. Nevertheless, through focusing on poverty in the US, David Joy implies that his target readers are Americans. For example, he mentions “Baltimore” (l. 167), one of the poorest cities in the US, and “an America where all the folks I’ve ever loved are dismissed as trash” (ll. 295-296).

The essay also includes references to two main categories of the American readerships, the poor and the rich. The rich are often referred to as the ‘privileged’ and are criticized by the writer:

…not just gentleness that’s a resource of the privileged. Maybe hope is a resource of the privileged… (ll. 173-176);...