Liliane Dévieux-Dehoux

Liliane Dévieux-Dehoux (29 December 1942 – 7 January 2020) was a Haitian and Canadian author, poet, and journalist. She was born in Port-au-Prince and wrote stories and kept a diary as a child. After secondary school, she studied literature in France. Already a mother of one child with a Haitian husband, she moved to Montreal, Quebec, with them in 1964 to further her studies at the Université de Montréal. She had two more children there. In the 1970s and 1980s, Dévieux-Dehoux published poetry and short stories in many publications. Her 1976 novel L'Amour, oui. La mort, non (Love, Yes. Death, No) was popular among Caribbean critics and won a Prix littéraire des Caraïbes (Caribbean Literary Prize). She became a journalist and interviewer for Radio Canada International in 1976 and joined her university's Centre de recherches caraïbes (Centre of Caribbean Research) in 1981. At the centre, she focused on Haitian oral tradition.

Economic and political migration are major themes in Dévieux-Dehoux's work, which also questions traditional gender roles. L'Amour, oui. La mort, non combines sources of inspiration from Haitian literature to evoke the struggles of Haitian migrant workers. Her short story "Piano-Bar" suggests that migration has allowed women to escape the patriarchal aspects of Caribbean culture.