Excerpt from Cécé by Emmelie Prophète, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"She really is dead," I managed to stammer as we entered the room. "Hush, petite," she replied, her eyes opening wide.

"Christa! Christa!" she cried, feeling Grand Ma's brow and neck before letting out a scream.

Tears ran down her round cheeks. I started to cry too, then launched into the keening you always hear when someone in the Cité dies. Neighbor Soline put her large, rough hand over my mouth and said, sobbing: "Petite, are you trying to wake up Freddy and his men? They only just went to bed. At your age you should understand these things."

I nodded as Soline, both hands on her head, skipped around the room, repeating "Bon Dieu Ô! Bon Dieu Ô!"

Uncle Frédo, almost as dead to the world as his mother, was snoring in the little bedroom whose door I'd forgotten to shut. It was empty except for a small iron bed and an old fuchsia-colored suitcase containing the few pieces of clothing he owned.

The Cité was quiet again. Freddy's gang had beaten Mackenson's. They were saying thirty deaths. Complete capitulation. Summary execution for the stubborn ones who refused to lay down their weapons. One gang only, one base, as they called it, would now be calling the shots in the Cité of Divine Power, and it would be Freddy's.

Neighbor Fany had called the funeral home. They arrived two hours later in a van that looked like the ones that ran between Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Martissant, and on the front of which was written "Divine Grace." Neighbor Soline had put on an apple

green men's shirt over her floral nightgown, and a pair of long pants underneath. She looked odd under all these layers, and I couldn't help but think of all the crazy clownish characters who circulated during Kanaval – la mayotte, we called them – and who frightened me when I was little.

As usual, Neighbor Soline had all the say, and grief had given her even more authority. She told us to wait 'til 3 p.m. before starting to mourn. Joe, Edner, Fany, Fénelon, and his wife, Yvrose, agreed.


Rigor mortis had set in and made it impossible to close Grand Ma's eyes.

"In two or three days you'll be able to," said the funeral home worker as he transferred Grand Ma from the bed to the stretcher with the help of his assistant and the dexterity of someone who's spent a lot of time with corpses.

Uncle Frédo woke up. He looked old for a man of thirty-eight. He had slept in his clothes, now disheveled, and he smelled of booze. When they covered Grand Ma's head with the white sheet, he started screaming hoarsely, "Mama, Mama, Mama!" and Soline, Edner, Joe, Fany, Fénelon, and Yvrose told him in chorus: "Shut it! Shut up! Shut the hell up, you foolish tafiateur! You'll wake up the gangsters."

Uncle Frédo threw himself on the ground and started to moan softly.


Grand Ma had this house built herself. She loved to talk about it given half a chance. In the evening if she heard an odd sound on the roof, usually just rocks thrown by some bored kids, she would sit up in the bed and address the intrusion in a clarion voice.

"I built this house all by myself. I have no debt. I buy nothing on credit. I demand peace and quiet."

Her monologue could go on for several minutes, and she made sure all the neighbors heard her, Soline to her right, Fénelon and Yvrose to her left, Nestor out back, Pastor Victor and his wife Andrise a bit further on, Fany and her sister Élise in the house across the way, and whoever was passing by, whoever might have a reason to envy or resent her.

She used to tell me that when she had bought the plot of land forty years earlier, hardly anyone ever passed by. It was nothing but bushes, and her closest neighbors lived nearly five hundred meters away, a man named Joachim, his wife, and their daughter. All three of them were so old it was hard to believe she was their daughter. Grand Ma was never sure if the seller had really been the owner. No survey had ever been done. She'd built these two rooms with the help of Rosia's dad, Rosia being my mother, and moved in. More people came after that, at a frenetic pace, and put up makeshift shacks, leaving little alleys to get around. The government never protested, never bothered to get involved.

Excerpted from Cécé by Emmelie Prophète. Copyright © 2025 by Emmelie Prophète. Excerpted by permission of Archipelago Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.