The weather is freezing in Montreal, but a bit of the Haitian sun enters my home through the smile of Emmelie Prophète on Zoom.
Posted on February 13
I have a little pang of jealousy when his black coffee without sugar is brought to him, because it is certainly better than mine. The coffee is so good in Haiti (and also the chocolate, the mangoes, the avocados, the lobsters, the coarse-salt fish, the rum, I stop here before making myself suffer more).
Emmelie Prophet was one of the first people Dany Laferrière introduced me to in Port-au-Prince, the day before the 2010 earthquake. is an extraordinary person. I was surprised to learn that she had accepted the post of Minister of Culture and Communications in the current Haitian government, while the country is going through an extremely difficult period since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Isn’t it risky right now? “But it’s always risky, that’s why I said a definite no in November,” she replies. Emmelie Prophet finally accepted under pressure from the Haitian cultural world and Prime Minister Ariel Henry. “He was like, ‘Listen, if you’re not helping me, how do you expect me to try to change anything?’ »
PHOTO ÉTIENNE CÔTÉ-PALUCK, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Emmelie Prophet in her office in Port-au-Prince
Emmelie Prophet is a proud Port-au-Princienne by birth, who grew up in a middle-class family (civil servant father, seamstress mother) and she has no intention of leaving her country, no matter the turmoil. She could easily have joined the ranks of the diaspora, having studied or worked in the United States, France and Switzerland. But Emmelie is one of those who stay, and she quotes me a disturbing study that just came out, according to which 82.3% of Haitians dream of leaving Haiti. “But Haitians must know that there is no longer an Eldorado, they have to build their country, their places of life,” she says in her deep, radiophonic voice – she makes radio for a long time, I see her microphone that she uses for the broadcast Emmelie’s notebooks that she held on Magik9 until her appointment.
The most cynical might ask what is the use of a Ministry of Culture in a collapsed country like Haiti, but here I recall Dany Laferrière’s famous phrase the day after the 2010 earthquake: “When everything falls, culture remains. It’s not Emmelie who would contradict him. “Culture has always raised a lot of hope in this country. It is perhaps today the only way to impose Haiti in a positive way in the international media. The culture that comes from Haiti is original, it makes people talk about it, we learn about this country through its culture. »
It is above everything and shows this other Haiti which exists in spite of everything, despite defeats and accidents, this other Haiti which cannot be drowned in all this sea of incomprehension and disasters.
Emmelie Prophet
She proved it with her novel The Villages of God, very rooted in the contemporary reality of Haiti, within working-class neighborhoods undermined by gangs, because in addition to being a senior civil servant since 2006, Emmelie Prophet, who studied literature and law, is a journalist, poet and writer. This novel, published last year without fanfare by Éditions Mémoire d’encrier – the house of another old friend, Rodney Saint-Éloi – was a great success when Dany Laferrière praised it in a text where he passed the torch squarely to Emmelie Prophet if we wanted to know from now on through literature what Haiti is today. “He said to me, ‘Don’t think I did you a favor by doing that, I did myself a favor,'” she recalls with a laugh. This novel was an extraordinary moment in my life, it is unlike anything I have written before. To find out, know that his first novel, The testament of lonelinesspublished in 2007, will be reissued on February 16 by Mémoire d’encrier.
As the new minister, Emmelie Prophet intends to launch a project that has been close to her heart for a long time: a vast campaign of civic education. “So that the Haitian looks at himself a little more and understands that he must act on his environment. That he must create, perhaps on his own, better living conditions. He must be reconciled with himself and understand that he cannot live in the mess, that it is his responsibility, and that his convictions are not for sale. In the last 10 years, there have been abominable things in this country, people who voted for 1000 gourdes, but you can’t sell your own convictions. »
We need to have a real discourse about ourselves, because there is a real crisis of discourse, because the state has lost its ability to stage things. I’m trying to wake up something. It’s a very big bet I’m taking, and I don’t know if I’ll succeed.
Emmelie Prophet
If she can’t, who else can? Emmelie Prophet was born under the dictatorship and confides that she has not known simple moments since the fall of Duvalier. “We have entered a period of endless transition, without knowing what we really want and what contours to give to what would be beneficial for all. We went from mistake to mistake, anger to anger and failure to failure, and today we don’t know what to do. It goes all over the place, and there is a kind of devouring in society, everyone wants to take their place, but by eliminating the other preferably. We will get peace when we find the means to respect the laws on which we will all agree. We need an appeasement, because it will continue as long as it is the law of the strongest. »
And if Emmelie Prophet stays in Haiti, it is because, despite everything, this country has given her a lot and has made her the woman she is. “Not everyone can leave, as I like to say. I am basically from this country. I am a Prophet in my country too, because it is from here that I can speak. I don’t see how one could write, from another place, a book like The Villages of God. »
Questionnaire without filter
Coffee and me: “Coffee is my childhood, it’s my daily life as an adult, it’s my mother’s childhood too. Its aroma awakens in me all kinds of memories. My books, like my travels, begin and end with a coffee. »
What is the most beautiful place in Haiti? “The most beautiful corner of the country for me is the Môle Saint-Nicolas, in the northwest of the country. The road that leads there is very difficult, but the extraordinary landscapes console the physical suffering that one feels as the roads are bumpy, full of obstacles. It is a place full of symbols too, it is there that Christopher Columbus landed in 1492 with all the misfortunes that colonialism generates. »
Your influences as a writer? “There are many of them, I couldn’t name them all. Romain Gary, Georges Castera, Marie Chauvet, Jacques Stephen Alexis, Steinbeck, Baldwin, Yourcenar…
Who is Emmelie Prophet?
- Born in 1971 in Port-au-Prince.
- A graduate in literature and law from the State University of Haiti, and in communications from Jackson State University in the United States, she headed the National Book Directorate and the Haitian Copyright Office in Haiti, in addition to having worked as a diplomat in Geneva.
- She is a journalist, presenter, poet and writer. His work is published by Mémoire d’encrier and includes three collections of poetry and five novels, notably The testament of loneliness, Dignity Impasse and The Villages of God.