[522] June Anderson Center Amplifies Voices We Haven't Heard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 29, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

JUNE ANDERSON CENTER AMPLIFIES VOICES WE HAVEN’T HEARD
Creative Writing Publication is Collection of Dynamic Viewpoints

(MURFREESBORO) – Expressions of confidence, faith, defiance, togetherness, satire and sobriety characterize the second edition of Voices We Haven’t Heard, a publication of MTSU’s June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students available starting Thursday, July 1.
The latest Voices is larger than last year’s edition, and it includes feminist poetry and prose complemented by photographs of students engaged in center activities, all nestled between glossy, colorful covers.
Center Director Terri Johnson says the magazine empowers students by providing them with a creative outlet for their observations on racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and other forms of oppression.
For example, in “Ghetto Poetry,” Precious Creavalle anticipates the surprise her readers might feel in discovering that verbal talent can emerge from harsh conditions.
She writes, “Ebonics and old English all in one./Yeah I was locked up, but only for a fortnight./That’s right, broken English and Webster’s best/All in the same verse./How else could I use a term like/Government sanctioned self-contained purgatory and/’Hell Yeah’ in the same line?”
Brenda (Kidd) Navarro overturns conventional thinking about womanhood and invites the readers to consider numerous possibilities in “Flesh, Mind, and Soul.”
Her poem states, “I am Mother Nature, Gaia is my name./A renegade bitch that’ll drive you insane./I’m loyal, confident, motivated, and rare …/… and when I walk by everyone stares./I am the truth that can set every man free./Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous—that’s me.”
The centerpiece of Voices is Lawrence Tumpag’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” a chronicle of Tumpag’s struggles in defining manhood during a life marked by encounters with some of the worst examples of manhood imaginable.
Of his hard-working single mother, Tumpag writes, “Interspersed throughout my childhood, she would come across men she hoped could be companions, care takers, role models, father figure(s) … unfortunately many of them would turn out to be individuals who took advantage of her assets, dreams to have a ‘whole or complete family’ and finally one would use his own income to give a sense of financial security in exchange for subservience and dehumanization.”

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For comic relief, Gina Logue provides an essay on the relative absence of commercials for feminine hygiene products on prime time television compared to the overwhelming saturation campaigns for erectile dysfunction drugs.
She writes, “The Viagra spots are so preposterously over the top that they almost make one yearn for the straightforward Bob Dole solicitations of yesteryear. Targeting the older demographic is fine; insulting their taste is not. Viagra commercials have all the class of an orange leisure suit, circa 1977.”
Voices We Haven’t Heard is free and will be available from the June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students in its new home, Room 320 of the Keathley University Center. For more information, call 615-898-5989 or go to www.mtsu.edu/jac.

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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For a color jpeg of the cover of Voices We Haven’t Heard, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.





With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.