Growing out of a symposium convened at Duke in 2015 on the eve of Fèt Gede, this introduction sets out what its editors mean by walking together. Mache ansanm is borrowed from Vodou, where lwa are said to walk with their devotees and related spirits are grouped as variations on a shared principle; the editors extend it to protection claimed by occupying space, to transnational friendship and material support, and to a collectivity that does not rest on shared identity.

Queer functions here as an invitation rather than a category, since Haitian genders and sexualities resist imported nomenclature. The frame is tested against events the editors lived through: a Port-au-Prince memorial for the dead of the Pulse shooting, Hurricane Matthew's destruction of the Grand'Anse, and the threats that forced a Haitian cultural foundation to cancel an Afro-Caribbean LGBT film festival and shut its doors for weeks.