Marie Vieux Chauvet


Marie Vieux-Chauvet was a Haitian novelist, poet and playwright. Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, she is most famous works for the novels Fille d'Haïti, La Danse sur le Volcan, Fonds des Nègres, and Amour, Colère, Folie. She was also published under her maiden name, Marie Vieux.

Family history

Marie Vieux-Chauvet was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on September 16, 1916, to Constant Vieux, a Haitian politician, and his wife Delia Nones, a woman originally from the Virgin Islands. Marie completed her studies at the l'Annexe de l'École Normale d'Institutrices and obtained a degree in elementary education in 1933. She married Aymon Charlier, a doctor, then divorced him. She later married Pierre Chauvet, a travel agent.

Work

Vieux-Chauvet's works focus on class, color, race, gender, family structure and the upheaval of Haitian political, economic and social society during the United States occupation of Haiti and dictatorship of François Duvalier. Although she lived under heavy surveillance during Duvalier's dictatorship, Vieux-Chauvet persisted as a writer, hosting meetings of the Les Araignées du Soir, a group of poets and writers of which she was the only female.
Vieux-Chauvet sent a trilogy of novellas to France to be published as a single book titled Amour, Colère, Folie . The trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie was published in 1968 by the prestigious publishing house Gallimard in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir. The trilogy was perceived as an attack on the Haitian dictator François Duvalier. Fearing the dictator's legions of Tonton Macoutes, her husband bought all the copies of the book he could find in Haiti, and Vieux-Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard a few years later.
She moved to New York City, where she worked as a housekeeper, and she remarried. She died of brain cancer in the United States on June 19, 1973.
Extracts from her work appear in the anthologies Her True-True Name and Daughters of Africa. An English translation of Amour, Colère, Folie by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokur was published in 2009 with an introduction by Haitian-American writer Edwige Danticat.

Literary awards