Americans Who Tell the Truth

There is another quote that adds insight into Denise Giardina’s background and career, saying, “It’s important to know that people fought back. When I found out that people fought back, I thought maybe I should, too.” Denise Giardina is not simply a novelist. She is an award-winning novelist (among them the American Book Award, the Lillian Smith Award for fiction, and the Boston Book Review fiction prize) whose roots are deep in the coal mines of Appalachia. Two of her books center on the stories about coal – from the workers to the companies to the unions. Her words may be fiction, but they sharply and strongly describe the true experiences of underground coal mining in West Virginia.

Denise Giardina was born in 1951 and grew up in a West Virginia coal mining camp called Black Wolf. Much of her family worked underground, though her mother was a nurse and her father a bookkeeper for a coal company. They moved to Charleston once the mining camp closed. She graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973, later earning a Master’s in Divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary. Though she is currently a deacon in the Episcopal Church, and teaches at West Virginia State University, Giardina has focused much of her career on writing.

Her first novel, Good King Harry, was about Henry V of England. Giardina had had concerns about her writing and being taken as merely a regional writer, but concluded after Harry that, “Growing up [in Appalachia] is what made me a writer – staying here is what keeps me the kind of writer I want to be.” With W. Virginia as her backdrop, Giardina crafted two novels directly related to coal. 1987’s Storming Heaven took its inspiration from the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. It is a fictionalized account of the bloody and ugly fight of the coal miners’ attempts to unionize, and the mining companies who tried to stop them. In 1992, Giardina published The Unquiet Earth, exploring the history of coal mining from the 1930s forward. As with Storming Heaven, Giardina tells her stories using multiple narrators from all points of view and local dialect. The Unquiet Earth reveals the blatant disregard of coal operators for the miners and their families, from Black Lung disease and other health issues to dangerously unsafe working conditions. Both novels prove Denise Giardina to be a gifted storyteller, adept at exposing the horrors of the coal industry while providing a compelling read for any audience.

In addition to her literary career, Giardina is an activist for environmental justice, and has been since the 1970s. She made a bid for governor in 2000 as a third-party candidate to raise awareness about the devastating and toxic effects of MTR, or mountaintop removal coal mining. This method of mining blows off the tops of ancient mountains, exposing layers of coal. It makes mining easier, yet destroys forests and plant life, and pollutes streams. Toxic runoff from the mining process leach into communities (where people have lived for generations), forcing them to leave their homes. From Giardina’s gubernatorial run came the Mountain Party – now W. Virginia’s progressive political party and an affiliate of the Green Party.
 

"Just as Woody Guthrie, during the Great Depression, pondered over the difference between a bank robber and a bank, I puzzle over the modern-day difference between a terrorist and someone who supports mountaintop removal. One destroys with a bomb, the other with a fountain pen, dynamite, and a dragline. God help us."

There is another quote that adds insight into Denise Giardina’s background and career, saying, “It’s important to know that people fought back. When I found out that people fought back, I thought maybe I should, too.” Denise Giardina is not simply a novelist. She is an award-winning novelist (among them the American Book Award, the Lillian Smith Award for fiction, and the Boston Book Review fiction prize) whose roots are deep in the coal mines of Appalachia. Two of her books center on the stories about coal – from the workers to the companies to the unions. Her words may be fiction, but they sharply and strongly describe the true experiences of underground coal mining in West Virginia.

Denise Giardina was born in 1951 and grew up in a West Virginia coal mining camp called Black Wolf. Much of her family worked underground, though her mother was a nurse and her father a bookkeeper for a coal company. They moved to Charleston once the mining camp closed. She graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973, later earning a Master’s in Divinity from the Virginia Theological Seminary. Though she is currently a deacon in the Episcopal Church, and teaches at West Virginia State University, Giardina has focused much of her career on writing.

Her first novel, Good King Harry, was about Henry V of England. Giardina had had concerns about her writing and being taken as merely a regional writer, but concluded after Harry that, “Growing up [in Appalachia] is what made me a writer – staying here is what keeps me the kind of writer I want to be.” With W. Virginia as her backdrop, Giardina crafted two novels directly related to coal. 1987’s Storming Heaven took its inspiration from the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. It is a fictionalized account of the bloody and ugly fight of the coal miners’ attempts to unionize, and the mining companies who tried to stop them. In 1992, Giardina published The Unquiet Earth, exploring the history of coal mining from the 1930s forward. As with Storming Heaven, Giardina tells her stories using multiple narrators from all points of view and local dialect. The Unquiet Earth reveals the blatant disregard of coal operators for the miners and their families, from Black Lung disease and other health issues to dangerously unsafe working conditions. Both novels prove Denise Giardina to be a gifted storyteller, adept at exposing the horrors of the coal industry while providing a compelling read for any audience.

In addition to her literary career, Giardina is an activist for environmental justice, and has been since the 1970s. She made a bid for governor in 2000 as a third-party candidate to raise awareness about the devastating and toxic effects of MTR, or mountaintop removal coal mining. This method of mining blows off the tops of ancient mountains, exposing layers of coal. It makes mining easier, yet destroys forests and plant life, and pollutes streams. Toxic runoff from the mining process leach into communities (where people have lived for generations), forcing them to leave their homes. From Giardina’s gubernatorial run came the Mountain Party – now W. Virginia’s progressive political party and an affiliate of the Green Party.

Denise Giardina’s heritage and pride in her Appalachian background informed two of her novels and helps drive her activism for the mountains and people she loves and fights to protect.