BookBrowse Reviews Cécé by Emmelie Prophète

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An unwavering look at life in Haiti's capital, a city affected by rampant poverty and controlled by warring gangs, through the eyes of a young woman.

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The titular heroine of Emmelie Prophète's Cécé is bold and defiant in the face of relentless hardship. Born to a troubled teen mother who died of AIDS shortly after childbirth, Cécé was raised by her beloved Grand Ma in the Cité of Divine Power, in the outer reaches of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. From an early age, Cécé has no choice but to become streetwise—learning not to draw attention to herself, to hunker down when gunshots ring out, to be resourceful with the little she has, and to be careful of whom she trusts. After all, the neighborhood beyond the walls of their small home—cobbled together from old scraps of sheet metal—is a dangerous place. Rival gangs have taken over the city, with lethal consequences for those caught in the crossfire of their violent clashes. The government has all but ceded control to the gangs, and the police, overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, do little to intervene.

When she reaches her early 20s, the savviness and resilience that have been instilled within Cécé are put to the test like never before. After her grandmother's death, Cécé's only remaining family is an alcoholic uncle. With no money, Cécé turns to sex work to scrape by. Using what little she earns, she buys a cell phone, which she uses to document on social media the horrors that have become so commonplace in her neighborhood. With every bullet-riddled body and poverty-stricken neighbor she posts, Cécé's online following grows—bringing her to the attention of gang leaders and marketing executives alike, who each want to exploit her platform for their own gain. Cécé must then attempt to strike a precarious balance between taking control of her own life and staying on the good side of those who could hurt her.

There is a deliberate bluntness to Prophète's prose, which has been translated from the French by Aidan Rooney. It reflects Cécé's hardened exterior, a necessary tool to survive in a brutal society where death and suffering have become normalized. Take, for example, how nonchalantly she describes the most popular posts on her social media: "Dead bodies did very well. Better than the living. The more sordid the better… Nothing got more attention than a good corpse that was nice and warm or already rotting."

The role of social media and our complex relationship with it forms an important thread throughout the novel. For Cécé, social media is primarily about escapism and agency, a means of cultivating a confident, empowered persona that is not cowed by the threats and limitations of the real world. "We were all playing out our dream lives, which were far more important and real than the ones we lived," she says. But it also becomes her livelihood and her protection. Companies pay her to promote their products, and gang leaders offer to keep her safe in exchange for peddling their propaganda. These posts contrast with the uncompromising approach upon which she built her platform in the first place, forcing Cécé to confront difficult questions about intention and integrity.

There is also the suggestion that for Cécé, living in the constant shadow of violence and death, social media is a way to ensure she has a legacy to leave behind if the worst were to happen. "I desperately needed to exist," she proclaims at one point; her online presence is proof, should she become the Cité's next victim, that her life meant something.

For all its bleak qualities, Cécé's story is also peppered with quiet moments of kinship and compassion, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. After an old friend of her Grand Ma shows her kindness, she muses:

"I couldn't help thinking about the generosity that resisted the incredible violence, poverty and indifference that existed in the Cité. Féfé was one of the people who helped others, with the few resources at her disposal, which is what kept the fragile scaffolding of our community standing, despite the frustration and despair accumulating on it day by day."

This resilience is very much the heart of the novel, a juxtaposition and counterbalance to the uncomfortable truths on which it shines a light. While Cécé's plot and resolution may be somewhat thin, Prophète succeeds in capturing the cyclical nature of corruption and violence, boldly documenting a very specific time and place in social history—not unlike Cécé's social media posts.

This review first ran in the October 8, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.