1907-06-04: (Jacques Roumain Born in Port-au-Prince, the Marxist Writer Whose Novel Masters of the Dew Would Become the Most Celebrated Work of Haitian Liter…

1907-06-04: (Jacques Roumain Born in Port-au-Prince, the Marxist Writer Whose Novel Masters of the Dew Would Become the Most Celebrated Work of Haitian Literature, Translated Into English by Langston Hughes): Jacques Roumain was born on June 4, 1907, in Port-au-Prince into a wealthy family whose grandfather Tancrède Auguste had served as president. Educated in Europe, he returned to Haiti in 1927 and joined the struggle against the American occupation. With Philippe Thoby-Marcelin, Carl Brouard, and Antonio Vieux, he co-founded La Revue Indigène in 1927, the journal that launched the Indigenous Movement. In 1934, he established the Haitian Communist Party. Exiled by Vincent in 1936, he went to New York, where he befriended members of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes. He returned to Haiti in 1941 and was appointed to a diplomatic post in Mexico City, where he wrote Gouverneurs de la Rosée, translated into English by Hughes as Masters of the Dew. The novel, a poetic account of a peasant’s attempt to save his drought-stricken village, remains the most celebrated work of Haitian literature. Roumain died unexpectedly on August 18, 1944, shortly before its publication, at the age of thirty-seven.