Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Marie Vieux-Chauvet (born Marie Vieux; September 16, 1916 – June 19, 1973), was a Haitian novelist, poet and playwright.

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.

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 (Evening Spiders), 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 et folie (Love, Anger, Madness).

Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, she is most famous for the novels Fille d'Haïti (1954), La Danse sur le volcan (1957), Fonds des nègres (1960), and Amour, colère et folie (1968).

During her lifetime, she published under the name Marie Chauvet.

Amour, colère et folie was published in 1968 by the prestigious publishing house Gallimard in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir.

The book was perceived as an attack on the Haitian dictator François Duvalier.

Fearing the dictator's legions of a spooky and dreaded Haiti's secret police, the Tonton Macoutes (Les Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale), she moved to New York City.

Her husband, Pierre Chauvet, travelled to Haiti and bought all the copies of the book he could find.

Vieux-Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard a few years later.

She later remarried and worked as a housekeeper in Queens.

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 et folie (Love, Anger, Madness) by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokur was published in 2009 with an introduction by Haitian-American writer Edwige Danticat.