Jacques Roumain was one of an educated group of young people who were interested in the revindication of national folkways and culture, centered around the foundation of the publication La Revue Indigene in 1927. Their experience generated a movement of social protest as well as literary nationalism in Haiti. Poet and author of ethnological studies, Roumain also wrote a number of novels. His posthumous novel The Masters of the Dew (1978) is a powerful, realistic vision of life in a peasant community. The rhythm of Creolized French, the language of the people, and their culture permeate the novel.
