Introducing a special issue grown out of a 2015 Duke symposium, Chapman, Durban-Albrecht and LaMothe propose mache ansanm, walking together, as the organizing idea for queer Haitian studies. The Kreyol phrase describes how lwa accompany their devotees and how spirits sharing a character are grouped as variations on a single theme, and the editors extend it to scholarship: ancestral accompaniment, collective protection, and a way of being together that does not rest on shared identity. They begin with the Gede, the bawdy spirits of the dead whose licence to press on taboo sets the tone. Two recent events frame the argument, a Port-au-Prince memorial for those killed at the Pulse nightclub and the threats that forced a major Haitian foundation to cancel an Afro-Caribbean LGBT film festival. Surveying work by Chancy, Tinsley, McAlister, Strongman and Braziel, the editors hold that recurring crisis makes Haiti relational to the wider Americas.