Abstract
The same-sex couple in Roxane Gay's story "Of Ghosts and Shadows" navigates the dangers of invisibility within a society that marginalizes its 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, 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 represent a reclamation of both space and identity in contemporary Haiti.