Since the earthquake of 2010, evangelical Christians and the international LGBTQI rights movement have competed for influence in Haiti, each accusing the other of doing outsiders' work. Durban points to what both share: a willingness to call for still more foreign involvement in a country marked by European colonial rule and American imperialism.

Two frames, she shows, govern how such intervention gets justified. The first casts Haiti as a place so hobbled by its own culture that outside supervision is needed to push it forward against Haitian resistance. The second grants Haiti modernity but calls it a failed state, one whose only functioning capacity is violence, homophobia included.

Between those claims the book turns to Haitians themselves. Durban follows people who desire others of their own sex and people whose gender is lived creatively, and the resourceful ways they meet both the violence directed at them and the outside intervention that has never stopped.