Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall (née Colimon, April 11, 1918 – April 1997), was a

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

an writer. Born in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

, Colimon began her writing career as a playwright and published five plays between 1949 and 1960. In 1974 she published her first and most well-known novel, ''Fils de Misère''. She also wrote essays, short stories, and children's literature. Colimon's keen observations of the Haitian people's struggle against

poverty Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...

gave a particular poignancy to her work, as demonstrated by ''Fils de Misère''. In ''Les Chants des sirenes'', her collection of short stories, she explored the painful impact of the Haitian

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...

on both the individuals in exile and the Haitian community. She was one of the initial members of the

Feminine League for Social Action Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered f ...

Recording from the Library of Congress

Marie-Thérèse Colimon Hall reading from her own work (1980)

References

* * 1918 births 1997 deaths Haitian women novelists Writers from Port-au-Prince Haitian women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Haitian women writers 20th-century Haitian novelists 20th-century Haitian dramatists and playwrights Haitian suffragists {{Haiti-writer-stub