publication

"Our Love on Fire: Gay Men’s Stories of Violence and Hope in Haiti" is a performance script devised from an oral history project to offer insights into populations where machismo and homophobia are cultivated as regulatory and repressive mechanisms instead of sodomy laws. The script recounts events that took place on the evening of August 10, 2013, during which an engagement ceremony between a Haitian man and a gay British Red Cross officer attracted the wrath of their Port-au-Prince neighborhood residents. Those outside the compound where the engagement ceremony took place rioted, torched the upscale residence of ex-patriates, lit cars on fire, and terrorized guests. The performance of queer resistance in Haiti is the essay’s core focus. Set against the background of mass anti-homosexuality marches nationwide, the ceremony looms large in queer Haitians’ memory as an act of activism that retaliates against the general population’s incessant physical and psychological abuses, calls for legislation respectful of broad gender and sexual expressions, and redefines normative identity performances and queer sub-cultural codes. Specifically, the essay illuminates queer Haitian subjects’ activist struggles against punitive measures by Haitians who view non-normative expressions of gender and sexual identities as imported and/or elite behaviors to be uprooted.