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ASG candidates meet with voters; explain their platforms
April 27, 2012
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Review: Student-directed spring play “Glass Menagerie”
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Three state representative candidates have MHCC ties
advocate the
Volume 47, Issue 25
www.Advocate-Online.net
BeBe Zahara Benet (left and far right) interacts with students during her performance while Shannel (middle) entertains the crowd during Wednesday’s Divas of Diversity presentation in the College Theater. Both drag queens, from season one of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” which Benet won, performed lip-synchs to two songs as well as shared their personal stories and what diveristy means to them as well as a Q&A session with the audience. Photos by Mike Mata/The Advocate
Raw memoir of mistakes and accidents wins readers’ hearts by John Tkebuchava The Advocate
Lidia Yuknavich, MHCC’s literature and composition instructor, wins the reader’s choice award for the 2012 Oregon Book Awards for “Chronology of Water”
Lidia Yuknavitch, an MHCC literature and composition instructor, won the reader’s choice award for the introvert so public atten2012 Oregon Book Awards tion is a little hard for me,” for her personal memoir said Yuknavitch in response titled, “Chronology of Wato hearing she had won the ter.” award. Yuknavitch’s publisher “But I was really hapsubmitted her memoir to py for all my fellow misthe Literary Arts commitfits that a book like this tee, who hosts the 2012 could get a prize,” she said. Oregon Book Awards. Her Many faculty in the humaninovel was one of 100 books ties department were equally in her category, then found Lidia Yuknavitch thrilled and happy to have itself in a list of six finalists. a fellow colleague win an Readers of The Oregoaward for a literature piece. nian were asked to vote on Celia Carlson, literature and compositheir favorite books from the list of finalists. “Chronology of Water” received the tion instructor, said, “We are all absolutely most votes and earned the reader’s choice delighted for Lidia. We’re all especially pleased that she received some well deaward. “I was surprised and I’m actually a served recognition.”
Mt. Hood Community College
Michele Hampton, a literature and composition instructor who also read some of Yuknavitch’s work said, “She’s such an inspiration. Her love for writing is infectious.” “The book is dynamite and it’s truly a heart-wrenching story,” she said. Yuknavitch, describing the memoir in her own words, said, “It’s a memoir so memoirs are usually life stories and it’s the kind of story of a person who is going down the self-destructive path. “It’s more different than some other people’s (memoirs) because I wrote from the position of the kind of people who mess up a lot in life, cause I know I’m not the only person like that,” she said. Yuknavitch said that whereas the authors of many memoirs are talking about
inspirational topics and transcending difficulties, her memoir is one of mistakes, accidents and destructive choices. “Mine is more about some of us [messing] up in life but still managing to get through it,” she said of the memoir. Though Yuknavitch won the award for her memoir, non-fiction is something she does not want to write ever again, saying that writing about such personal things was both difficult and painful. “I had a weird hard life, so the process of writing the book was much more painful,” she said, adding that personal memoirs like hers require you to totally expose yourself to your reader. An avid writer, Yuknavitch has written three books of short stories and has two more novels coming out within the next two years and is working on a third.
See Memoir continued on page 5 Gresham, Oregon