The Cité of Divine Power, a neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince, has been ruled by gangsters since before the earthquake of 2010 – for as long as Cécé has lived there. She knows little about the world outside the Cité and doesn’t much care. At twenty, her life is dominated by the clients she has started ‘entertaining’ at home and the social media presence she religiously maintains. Despite this, Cécé is a shrewd narrator, resigned but observant. She remarks that foreign visitors to her local church ‘cried at our poverty but understood the utility of our misery’. She sees clearly that the people of the Cité are on their own, but also describes how they care for one another. A devout Catholic with mouths to feed gives Cécé food after her grandmother dies; in turn, when Cécé starts advertising skincare online, she passes her leftover samples to a neighbour to sell. 

Cécé comes together in short chapters, the slow pace of life in the Cité interrupted periodically by rapid gunfire and superficial changes of leadership. Emmelie Prophète, a former culture minister in Haiti, describes the difficult life in the Cité in powerful detail. Local gangs shoot their overthrown leader until he