Stereotypes In Unquiet Earth, Affrilachia

Many people have inexplicably portrayed Appalachian people, culture, and beliefs as outlandish, post-colonial, and debilitating to say the least. We have been represented as redneck, hillbilly, poor or lazy, and white-trash, with strong emphasis on the “white.” Writers like Denise Giardina, Frank X Walker, and others who created short stories within “Degrees of Elevation” work hard to debase the present-day stereotypes and work hard to guide people to the truth about Appalachia and the region. Appalachian literature, such as “Unquiet Earth” by Denise Giardina, “Affrilachia” by Frank X Walker, and short stories within “Degrees of Elevation” are all works of literature that can easily be characterized by many as realist texts created by authors

Denise Giardina gives us a perspective of life led in Appalachia in West Virginia, through a diverse set of characters, each with their own unique characteristics and problems. By doing so, she allows the reader, whether being Appalachian or not, to have an insider perspective about why Appalachian’s feel so strongly about the destruction of their land. We see this in “The Unquiet Earth” with Rachel describing the devastation that the strip mines have caused and the influx of people leaving the area because of this, “I knew the machines and strip mines had taken the job of the miners, who were getting only one or two days’ work a week. Every day I drove past the empty houses they left behind when they moved to Ohio or Michigan. I saw the weed choked fields where entire camps were torn down to the foundations, saw the boarded-up stores and movie theaters in the smaller towns, the loaded coal trucks from the new strip mines rumbling through Justice like great iron elephants and shaking the buildings, as though the town was being ground to dust (Giardina, 116).” By Giardina including this passage, we can see how she and the character felt about the destruction of the town and land by the strip mining. This place where she has grown up and that was often referred to as “the home place” throughout

Walker is also demonstrating the misunderstanding that the are no African Americans within Appalachia. We see this through his poem Affrilachia, “… enough to know / that being ‘colored’ and all / is generally lost / somewhere between / the dukes of hazzard / and the Beverly hillbillies / but / if you think / makin’ ‘shine from corn / is as hard as Kentucky coal / imagine being / an Affrilachian / poet (Walker, 93).” Here we see his obvious concern for the way African Americans are overlooked as not being “Appalachian” due to the medias portrayal through the Beverly hillbillies and the dukes of hazzard. Here we also see him working to change the way that people have simply overlooked the presence of African American’s within Appalachia. Walker also demonstrated within this poem, how hard it is to be an Affrilachian poet.

Lastly, within “Degrees of Elevation,” we also see some similarities that we see from Frank X Walker’s “Affrilachia,” in the sense that both authors in the short story Holler by Crystal Wilkinson. The depiction of hostility and disdain for African Americans within Appalachia is evident during the section where the incident has happened, and the protagonist is speaking with the police,