Writer

American author David Joy is the writer of the essay “Digging in the Trash” which was published in the online magazine The Bitter Southerner. The American magazine promotes Southern culture and stories.

The essay includes extensive biographical information about David Joy, who uses a variety of personal stories to convey his arguments. From these personal stories, we find out that he comes from a poor background as his father and grandfather struggled with poverty: “My father didn’t have it easy growing up. Some of his earliest memories are in a one-bedroom shack he called the rat house where he was afraid to go to sleep…” (ll. 78-81). We find out his grandfather was an alcoholic carpenter who faced numerous hardships in his life, including surviving World War II and cancer. His father was eventually raised by an aunt.

However, David Joy did not grow up in the same extreme poverty: “…few minutes from where we lived to the t...