Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall, novelist of Haiti’s poor, is born in Port-au-Prince

She was born Marie-Thérèse Colimon in Port-au-Prince on 11 April 1918. She began in the theatre and published five plays between 1949 and 1960. In 1974 came the novel that made her name, Fils de Misère, which looks straight at what poverty does to a Haitian family. Her short-story collection Le Chant des sirènes followed the pain of the diaspora on both ends, the ones who leave and the ones left behind. She was one of the founding members of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale, the organization that fought for Haitian women to vote. She died in April 1997.