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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

The closest I had ever come to a protest was in 2003, in Bangkok, when I tried and failed to join the Stop the War demonstration against the Iraq War I had arrived in Bangkok’s central most park, Lumpini Park, just as people were dismantling their signs and banners Seven years on, Lumpini Park was to be the site for a different kind of protest, and this time around, I was to have some experience of it   The ‘Red Shirts’ had arrived en masse in Bangkok in March, six months after I had moved to the city to live Made redundant and with no job on the horizon, I had moved here to teach English and had been enjoying the peaceful lifestyle, hot weather and delicious food There had been some warning signs before the protest began The Red Shirts had taken responsibility for a rocket launcher attack on a market in January 2010, and I asked my Thai friends a lot of questions about the attack They seemed concerned about the situation, but assured me Bangkok was quite safe and they would not target the areas frequented by foreigners   I first heard that there would be a protest a few weeks before it began It got everyone at my school talking, and the Red Shirts’ imminent presence seemed to catapult the ex-pat community into a frenzy of speculation and intrigue Numerous rumours were bandied around about their intentions, motivations and strengths and weaknesses A colleague of mine remarked, not long before the protests began: ‘I don’t want to sound alarmist, but from what I can make out we should be expecting civil war quite soon’ He nodded this in such a grave and knowing fashion that others around him momentarily forgot not to get carried away Thai friends I spoke to seemed more measured, but already there was a feeling that they were unappreciated and unwanted by most Bangkok residents, who cited the protesters’ poor education to discredit their motives   In the early days of the protest, the Red Shirts camped out across the river from my work and my apartment

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

READ NEXT

poetry

August 2013

Poem from fortune: animal spiral

Sarah Lariviere

poetry

August 2013

xi. inside friend friend is not the landscape: to turn into the water wears and deposits rock, time friend,...

fiction

November 2014

The Lighted Way

Jeremy Chambers

fiction

November 2014

Dad used to believe that the souls of the dead rise up into the air and become one with...

poetry

October 2012

Saint Anthony the Hermit Tortured by Devils

Stephen Devereux

poetry

October 2012

  Sassetta has him feeling no pain, comfortable even, Yet stiffly dignified at an odd angle like the statue...

 

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