Blackwell Reference Online

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Jacques Roumain was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on June 4, 1907. One of the Caribbean's foremost novelists, radical thinkers, and poets, Roumain achieved a great deal in a remarkably short life. His best-known and final work, the evocative Les Gouverneurs de la rosée (Masters of the Dew) , remains a landmark in Caribbean literature. After an elite upbringing in Haiti's capital, Roumain left for Europe, where he spent his formative years studying in Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland, before returning to US-occupied Haiti in the 1920s. Barely in his twenties, Roumain was absorbed by the revolutionary nationalism of the period. He channeled his protest against the occupation in his writings. Inspired by his contemporaries, in particular Jean Price-Mars, as well as by the Négritude movement and the Harlem Renaissance , Roumain helped found the indigenous movement, which privileged native Haitian aesthetics and folklore over European traditions. Although best known for his literary achievements, Roumain was also a fervent Marxist, political organizer, and distinguished statesman. He participated in the 1929 student strike against the US Marines in Haiti. In 1934 he formally organized the Haitian Communist Party (Parti Communiste Haïtien, PCH) with his associate, Christian Beaulieu. The PCH represented the culmination of two years of immersion in Marxist theory. At a time when ... log in or subscribe to read full text