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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....

There’s a clarity to Audre Lorde’s writing that becomes most apparent when you are presented with a collection of her work Plainly written and devoid of the distractions of punctuation, her poetry is a series of questions and answers, of memories and musings Lorde’s prose, meanwhile, is easy to understand without feeling easy – there’s a sense that despite the lack of smoke and mirrors, we still need to work to understand exactly what she is saying Lorde’s work is not a series of straightforward proposals for a feminist utopia, or simple ideas about queer people assimilating into the mainstream Instead, her essays swing between lyrical musings about race, class, gender and sexuality, and bold statements of fact, backed up by evidence from her own academic research, and that of her peers   Lorde’s writing is unapologetic about being forthright; essays begin with phrases such as ‘There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise’, and ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface’ However, mid-essay, a  sentence like ‘I am thankful that one of my children is male, since that helps keep me honest’ will appear, challenging even the most feminist of her readers This is not socialism or feminism for the classroom, but an acknowledgement that speaking the truth, even if it jars, must be at the heart of our politics In her introduction to Your Silence Will Not Protect You, the academic Sara Ahmed reminds us of Lorde’s famous statement that ‘revolution is a process, not a one-time event’; truly understanding Audre Lorde’s writing is also a process, and the more of it we are given, the easier it becomes   Perhaps this is an obvious observation to make, but it’s an important one It hasn’t always been easy to access Lorde’s ideas: a full collection of Lorde’s poetry and prose has not been available in Britain until now Her writing has largely been absorbed not as a full body of work, but through a series of social justice memes and one-line quotes found in the keynotes of feminist conferences This fact is quoted on the jacket

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...

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fiction

July 2013

univers, univers

Régis Jauffret

TR. Jeffrey Zuckerman

fiction

July 2013

I. You remember your childhood. Your tow-headed, reddish-tinged mother, who yelled after you all day like a Paraguayan peasant...

Prize Entry

April 2015

The Incidental

Luke Melia

Prize Entry

April 2015

The automatic rifle fire was followed by an unnerving whistle at Ti’s ear. He gripped the shopping bags, grabbed...

Art

May 2015

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov

E-E

Art

May 2015

Madder than the World is a series by Russian artist (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, who came to prominence as a founding member of the...

 

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