Paul Laraque dies in New York, a soldier who wrote in Creole

Paul Laraque died in New York at eighty-six. Born at Jeremie on 21 September 1920, he entered the Haitian military academy in 1939 and came out an officer in 1941. Riding through the countryside as a soldier is what showed him how the peasants lived. He wrote poetry, and with Felix Morisseau-Leroy, Emile Roumer and Franck Fouche he was among the first to publish in Creole. In 1960 Duvalier retired him from the army after his wife’s uncle was arrested; in 1961 he went into exile, and in 1964 the regime stripped him of his nationality. In 1979 he won the Casa de las Americas prize, the first French-language writer ever to take it. He came home in 1986 and left again in 1991 when the army removed Aristide.