“She will be right”: Queer Haitian Protest in Roxane Gay’s “Of Ghosts and Shadows”

Abstract: The same-sex couple in Roxane Gay’s story “Of Ghosts and Shadows” navigates the dangers of visibility within a society that marginalizes their love as “too American.” By transforming into the titular ghosts and shadows, the protagonists embody queer protest that challenges both local and imported homophobic ideologies. Rather than “coming out,” the two lovers go inward, into the private space of the bedroom, a room they have made their own. Recent scholarship on Movement M, or Kominote M, and the queerness inherent in the Afro-diasporic spiritual tradition of Vodou provide necessary context for the transfiguration of the story’s characters into im/material beings. The women’s protest represents a reclamation of both space and identity in contemporary Haiti.